This episode features Ranjit Bawa, US Chief Strategy and Technology Officer at Deloitte. Ranjit explores the transformative impact of AI, the accelerating pace of technological innovation, the pivotal role of connectivity in modern business, and much more.
This episode features Ranjit Bawa, US Chief Strategy and Technology Officer at Deloitte. Ranjit explores how Deloitte integrates strategy and advanced technology to address client challenges effectively. He explores the transformative impact of AI, the accelerating pace of technological innovation, and the pivotal role of connectivity in modern business. He offers valuable insights on managing technology investments while maintaining operational efficiency and provides guidance on leading through change to drive substantial digital transformation.
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Guest Bio
Ranjit is Deloitte’s US chief strategy and technology officer. He is responsible for corporate and technology strategy, innovation, and emerging growth businesses, as well as oversight of Deloitte ecosystems and alliances. Ranjit is an adviser to the CEO and serves on the Executive Leadership team. He sponsors several Deloitte CXO programs and actively serves a number of clients in the financial services and high-tech space. In his prior role, Ranjit led the Cloud business for Deloitte.
Ranjit’s perspective has been sharpened over the course of nearly two decades spent designing strategy and technology solutions for some of the world’s most technology-centered enterprises, including serving leading global financial institutions where technology is the foundation of the service delivery model.
Ranjit’s educational background—including degrees in electrical engineering and finance—gives him a well-rounded understanding of the interrelated dynamics of technology and economics. His early career in aircraft engineering operations steeped him in an environment where every decision has an impact on a complex, mission-critical system. Today, he applies that perspective to help organizations reimagine themselves at every step along their strategy and technology journey.
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Guest Quote
“There's no strategy today without technology. So us bringing those two together was an integral part of how we show up in front of our clients and how we think about our own strategy.”
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Time stamps
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[00:00:00] Ian: In the ever-evolving world of business revolution is underway. Welcome to Hyperconnected Journeys where the future of success begins. Right now, I'm your host Ian Faison, and I'm joined by my co-host and industry leader, Raj Purkayastha, to guide you through the intricacies of network transformation. We're here to be your compass in the realm of network transformation in a world that's customer-centric and interconnected.
Join us on unleashing the Power of Hyperconnectivity. Welcome to Hyperconnected Journeys. I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios. I am joined by my amazing co host, Raj. Raj, how are you?
[00:00:39] Raj: Good, yeah. Good to talk to you again.
[00:00:42] Ian: Indeed. Uh, and we have a special guest. Ranjit, how are you?
[00:00:46] Ranjit: I'm very well, yeah. Thanks for having me on the show today.
[00:00:49] Ian: Yeah, excited to, uh, to talk about all the cool stuff that you're doing at Deloitte, your background and everything in between. Uh, so let's get into it. Uh, what was your first job in technology?
[00:01:01] Ranjit: I was an aircraft engineer, right out of engineering school. In maintenance operations. So not a rocket scientist, but more a mechanic, but that's where I started.
[00:01:11] Ian: Amazing. And, uh, and flash forward to today, uh, tell us what it means, uh, uh, to be the, uh, the technology leader at Deloitte.
[00:01:20] Ranjit: You know, it's been a bit of a journey, uh, in a minute, so to say, but, uh, I did that. I spent some time going back to school to study finance, and then I did a bit of a startup, which didn't go too far, but then I joined the firm about 20, 24 years ago, and then Here, I feel like I've had, you know, so many different jobs.
I could have worked for a bunch of different companies as well. Now I've worked in different industries, in public sector, in technology, media, and entertainment, in financial services. Now I led our cloud business, but the last year or so I've been leading our strategy and technology group. And, uh, the reason we brought it together is, you know, Partly because you guys are no stranger to this, but there's no strategy today without technology.
So us bringing those two together was an integral part of how we show up in front of our clients and how we think about our own strategy. So I own strategy, technology, ecosystems and alliances and innovation, which is really where we think the magic happens. If I do it right, that's where the magic happens.
If I don't, then that's where great ideas come to die. So I'm hoping it's the former, but the verdict's still out.
And how do you think about connectivity playing a role in, uh, in Deloitte?
Well, connectivity is central to what we do. We are a multidisciplinary firm. So we have at least, you know, 20 different practice areas.
Now they're all go to market with their unique skill set and their unique depth in a particular area. We also have all this technology we're working with, so between how our practices come together, the power of the firm really is in our ability to be able to weave all those different practice areas around a client's problem.
And our ability to be connected, integrally connected, and you know, client back in these situations is what I think differentiates us from anybody else. And then to layer on top of that, all the convergence that's happening with technology today, it only makes it, you know, I guess easier, but at the same time, more complicated, easier for us because, you know, connectivity is so central to our DNA and our fabric.
So we think we can, you know, bring ourselves together, even on converging technologies. But difficult because a lot of our clients are navigating all this convergence that's happening and the rate of change. So, you know, certainly I think we have a role to play. So, um, and this is just a central topic today for everything we're doing.
[00:03:42] Raj: Quick question, Ranjit, you know, you said you started off, uh, as an. Uh, mechanic in the aircraft industry and now you're here. Now in the journey that you had, uh, you know, what are the big changes or shifts that you've seen in technology and what do you, you know, wish, uh, was there with you when you first started your job?
[00:04:06] Ranjit: Great question, Raj. So maybe, you know, three big things, obviously many things have changed, but the three big things I think that stay with me. One is that technology has become so central to our clients and our business. It's no longer an enabler or a supporter, it is the business. So, so many of my clients, their product is technology itself.
So that's been a fundamental shift in how we've evolved over the last, you know, two, three decades. The second thing, which is again, you know, we're all living it, is the rate of change. We've never seen this kind of rate of change and it keeps accelerating in terms of what it took us five years to adopt or four years to adopt the next PC.
Now we're looking at, you know, 18 months and 12 months and six months. So I think our ability and broadly our client's ability to be able to embrace that rate of change. Is causing some fundamental tensions on how organizations can, you know, can adapt so quickly and be flexible and agile in their ability to be able to adapt and pivot.
And then the third thing I think I, if I had known to your question, 20, 25 years ago, I think it would have been around how much more we can do with software. That we were trying to do other ways, you know, as an electrical engineer or mechanical engineer, et cetera, we didn't realize at that point, this big pivot to software.
So, you know, the airline I work for, even any auto manufacturer today has more software engineers today than they have automotive or, you know, or airline aircraft engineers, which is again, you know, if I'd known some of that earlier, maybe I would have made a pivot sooner and, you know, um, retired sooner, but anyway, yeah.
[00:05:48] Ian: Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. What was the, what was the startup, uh, that you started many years ago?
[00:05:54] Ranjit: And it's a good question. It, uh, you know, we, um, we started that time location based services were just about getting some recognition. So we at that time identified that if he could truly track location on individual cell phones, we could use that data to triangulate where people were moving and more.
So what is the density of traffic movement? And based on that, be able to better predict. The right, you know, route from point A to point B and, uh, we took it in a roadshow. We got a bunch of great funding. We had some real backing as well. Uh, but I think the idea was a little ahead of its time. So we think, but it's really what Waze does today.
But this was in the late nineties, early two thousands, just pre dot com bust, but it was essentially that same idea.
[00:06:42] Raj: Wow.
[00:06:45] Ian: Amazing. I always love hearing those, the old startup, you know, uh, the step along the way is so fun.
[00:06:53] Ranjit: Yeah, for sure. I think it accelerates our learning coming out of school. We thought, you know, this is what we do all our lives, et cetera, and then you get back into a regular job and you start at the bottom of the totem pole.
So it took us a while to realize that, you know, you don't only engage with CEOs and heads of businesses, you actually have to make your way up. So it was a good humbling experience to come back into the corporate world after flying high on a startup.
[00:07:22] Ian: Okay. So let's get to our first segment where we're going to talk about building a digital foundation for enterprises. Um, Transcribed Yeah. What, uh, what trend are you watching right now, uh, as, as the top trend for, for both you and your clients?
[00:07:37] Ranjit: I think, you know, um, obviously the trends are what they are.
We are closely watching, uh, the AI trend, if you call it that, right? It's really come at us as like a tsunami. In the last year. We continue to play, play close attention to cloud and to ar vr and to quantum and to blockchain and cyber. As you would expect, but more importantly for us is really the application of the trend.
How does it make a difference to our clients? How do they move the needle on their business and their capabilities and their products? So we're quite focused on separating the noise from the signal and where there is signal, how do we apply that to real business problems and real, you know, challenges that our clients have.
So that, I think, at a macro level is how we approach these trends. So that's first. The second thing, obviously, like I mentioned to you is the rate of change itself. So, you know, while we'll keep an eye on the trends, but I think our clients, including ourselves, have a real challenge in front of us in our ability to be able to pivot quickly as the next trend or the next wave catches on.
And for us to stay competitive, our ability to be able to pivot and have that level of structural agility is really important. So we also spend a fair amount of time Preparing ourselves and our clients for the future. Sometimes it's known and sometimes it's unknown. So we, rather than spending too much time crystal gazing on the trends, we spend more time in saying, look, there are lots of unknowns, but here's some no regret bets you can make in terms of just structural agility.
So that's the second thing I'd say now. And then the third, which, you know, we're also spending and actually quite focused on a large part of our businesses. Is on the whole adoption piece of this. So as these trends continue to come and come at us at a faster pace, typically organization's ability to adopt these trends and these changes is pretty low in general, and not because.
They're not structurally agile, but also because people have a certain capacity to learn and to pivot. And today, the rate of change is far exceeding people's capacity to embrace that change. So that gap between those two lines, if you can visualize two lines on a graph, The rate of change up there and the ability to adopt that change, that gap continues to widen.
So a large part of our time is also spent in narrowing that gap or helping our clients better embrace the technology more from a change or, you know, hearts and minds perspective.
[00:10:04] Raj: Yeah. So if I can ask a question, you know, right now, uh, uh, you know, you're wearing the hat of strategy and technology officer for Deloitte, right?
You've also seen the customer's side of the business. Now how hard it is to deploy or execute on strategy and the vision, uh, for the company, uh, vis a vis when you actually went it, went with those kinds of things to your customers and said, Look, this should be a strategy, this should be a roadmap, and this is how you should execute it.
Right. So, uh, do you see that there is difficulty when you're doing it within the company or it's, it's the same both ways per se?
[00:10:49] Ranjit: Yeah, it's a great question, Raj. And I often get that question and we get asked all the time. I think consultants in general are really hard clients. So you know, and then the fact is doing it to yourself is always really hard.
Yeah. Which is why a lot of our clients hire us as well, because it's like trying to do surgery on yourself, right? So, you know, as we're trying to drive this transformation internally, we're also finding that You know, sometimes it's just really, really hard to make some hard decisions on how to pivot, where to drive automation, how to think of our business and do buy, hold, sell across the portfolio.
But that's where I think discipline really counts and is important. And we're, you know, we're really focused on doing this the right way. Then keep sort of a broader existential question in mind so that, you know, if you don't do this now and do it the right way, then we have bigger challenges ahead of us and that keeps us sort of focused.
[00:11:42] Ian: So as, as chief strategy officer and CTO, how much time do you spend with clients versus, you know, working on the business?
[00:11:51] Ranjit: In my first year, because I was just coming into the role that, you know, I committed to spending more time understanding our business, particularly since It also requires me to have a deep understanding of our tax and our audit business and our global businesses, et cetera, which I was relatively new to.
So I, I chose, you know, deliberately not to spend too much time with my clients in the first year. So I could do justice to the role and the job and the attention it needed. But now as I'm coming to my second year, I spend about 25 percent or my aim is to spend about 25 percent of my time. Uh, with my clients externally, even through my first day, I kept one or two clients that I work with, continue to work with closely, and that I think is the right balance for what I need to do for my job right now.
It also keeps me very relevant in the marketplace, but more so, we constantly learn from our clients as well, and also helps challenge orthodoxies internally and vice versa. So I think it, you know, it, it is a good symbiotic relationship both ways to have that kind of a balance. And I hope at some stage to even get to a.
You know, 50 50 you know, in the firm, most of our roles are, uh, for a certain period of time. And the expectation is that everybody will go back to client service after they do their tour of duty. So I do hope that over the next few years, I will go back to client service, which is really the highest order role one can have in the firm.
[00:13:18] Ian: Yeah, it's super fascinating. I mean, I think, uh, obviously in a company the size of Deloitte and the amount of, you know, clients that y'all work with and, and, uh, I'd imagine that You know, there's, and just how long, obviously, the company has been around, too, that there's immense challenges, you know, or opportunities, if you like to put it that way, on the internal technology and thinking about, uh, building technologies and working on, you know, optimizing processes and, and all those type of things, which sort of always needs that entrepreneurial spirit, uh, done, you know, and then.
Working on the client side, obviously, you get all sorts of different challenges and opportunities and exciting stuff as well.
[00:14:01] Ranjit: Yeah, for sure. And it's a great point because, you know, like all large organizations, after a point in time, you really have to stand back and look at things and see how, you know, you can go look at urban legends and orthodoxies and challenge them.
Because they just, you know, everybody gets set in their ways, which is, you know, partly why we also continue to rotate leaders through these roles, because they can bring in some fresh perspective and keep us agile and nimble. But it is often, if you look away for a while, you know, it's quite possible that one can get stale in one's capabilities and not.
Core platforms and processes. So we're constantly challenging ourselves and making sure we are quote unquote fit for the fight.
[00:14:43] Raj: Ranjit, a question, you know, you've seen companies large and small, uh, new and pretty, uh, established, right? Now, uh, when you, when you look at those companies, which do you think has more challenges?
Is it the, Established companies, uh, which are large or established companies, midsize or new companies large, which of them will have More challenges, opportunities, and, and, uh, you know, things to tackle with.
[00:15:16] Ranjit: Yeah, that's another fascinating question, Raj. You know, I don't, I don't have a really good answer.
I think that companies will have different kinds of challenges. I think the big companies have a fundamental challenge of being able to pivot fast enough to be able to look at their cost structure and think about things in a more gen AI cloud native way. So I've like big clients of mine who run, for instance, large companies.
Reservation platforms for like 300 million a year as a TCO and a run rate. And then I have some smaller, you know, mid stage companies that run a similar platform with the same number of properties, if not more, for 30 million a year. So there's a 10X difference between the two. Now for the big companies to come from 300 million to 30 million is next to impossible, unless you do a scorched earth strategy, rebuild everything from scratch.
Could take them, you know, five years with a 50 percent chance of success. The smaller companies on the other hand can scale pretty quickly, but they still have a challenge with brand, with customer acquisition, with, you know, just their ability to be able to, you know, I think different challenges. I do believe that in the longer run though, Gen AI native thinking, cloud native thinking, extreme automation will prevail.
The question is, will the bigger companies be able to pivot fast enough, whether they create greenfield, new organizations that will do that for them. And over time they deprecate the old and build around the new or a completely new set of organizations will take over. I think it's probably going to be a mix of those two.
[00:16:51] Raj: Fascinating. Yeah. Yeah,
[00:16:55] Ranjit: it really is. And I think we're going to see a lot more. I think the barrier to entry continues to get lowered, you know, every year. So, you know, for a new startup to enter into a established space and get to a billion, you know, as you know, is getting, you know, that timeframe is shrinking, but I think we're going to see more disruption like that and a lot more innovation, a lot more entrepreneurs.
I was looking the other day, there are 200, 000 Gen AI native, You know, companies out there, some form that have mushroomed in the last year, now many of them will probably not, you know, see another year, but still it just, you know, creates so much more innovation and so much more fuel for growth.
[00:17:39] Ian: Yeah, it's amazing. When it, it just, it, it just, you know, as with all startups always, it's like, you know, whatever the 1 percent that make it and the 0. 1 percent that make it big. Um, but it also just fuels so much, uh, of that sort of like entrepreneurial, you know, those ideas. You know, we've had, uh, CIOs that we talked to in the past where, you know, they, they just love working with startups, you know, it's like they just bring startups into their org and say, hey, you know, we'll be, we'll be customer one or customer five or whatever.
And we get to have a huge say in building. Features and we get to have, you know, it's like, and like, they're like, I could have never built this team to work on our project that would have cost me a fortune. And now I get to have, you know, stuff purpose built for us, uh, in all intents and purposes, you know, as they're building out this product.
So that sort of stuff is so, so exciting and it, you know, it brings, uh, some excitement and innovation and, uh, you know, an energy into, uh, absolutely into, uh, into a company.
[00:18:40] Ranjit: Yeah. And you know, that's, that's, uh, it's interesting cause we do that a lot as well. And so do a lot of my clients. Now the downside is while they enjoy the speed and the agility and the challenge and the, you know, and, and just the innovation, the downside is sometimes the startups just get overwhelmed with the weight of the enterprise.
Which mean contracting terms and meetings and the pace of change, et cetera. And now here's a startup, which is like 15 people. And you know, here's a big enterprise that has 30 lawyers in every call with those 15 people to try and get an MSA written. So they kind of, you know, they really lose the will to live, you know, if they're not careful, right.
And we know, so we also have to be very careful. Sometimes, you know, we relate that to the elephant dancing with the butterfly. Everybody's well intentioned, but if you're not careful, it doesn't end so well for the butterfly.
[00:19:33] Ian: Just getting through, getting through procurement is, that's right, is a real nightmare.
Yeah, the, the, the, the elephant's tail is, uh, is procurement there, I think, perhaps. Yeah, no, it's a great point. It's a, it's a great, uh, challenge to, for, you know, for all those startups. That's why, you know, that's why it's hard to make it, you know. Um, I'm curious, as you think about sort of, like, disrupting yourself or however, you know, you think about innovation, um, and digital transformation, like, are you on a digital transformation journey?
How do you even think about that? Is it, you know, innings? Is it just, you know, uh, is it a marathon? Is it something that you're just constantly looking at? How do you think about that?
[00:20:20] Ranjit: Yeah, I think, you know, it kind of framed it there really well. I mean, we've used the term innings. We're in the second inning of a nine inning game.
It's a, it is a marathon. So we're constantly. Doing that, you know, we kind of evolving different capabilities and services as we go, you know, we're trying to make it more part of the fabric and DNA so that, you know, you don't need to think about innovation as a standalone function, or you go to these five people that will innovate for you and the rest of you can, you know, can just sit back and watch.
That doesn't work. It hasn't worked for us. We've also struggled a little bit with. Uh, you know, the, the, the fact that you, um, in this journey, uh, that you get into this thing about like perpetual transformation, right? And you get transformation fatigue. So people are constantly sitting at the edge of their seat, waiting for the next big transformation lever or the next big program to come hit them.
Which is also not a great place to be. So what, you know, what we've had more success with, and a number of my clients as well, is just make it part of BAU. So if you own a particular product or a function or a service, part of your job is to continuously evolve that and make it better. And that's part of your OKR, and that's part of how you get, you know, evaluated versus a third party team that comes in, you know, swoops in, looks at everything, craps on everything, and then, you know, tells you what to do and then takes off, right?
So You know, that gets old pretty quickly, this sustained model where, you know, owners themselves or product owners, business owners are held accountable seems to have more legs to it and feels a little bit more normal.
[00:21:54] Raj: Ranjit, you know, uh, I was speaking to a few, uh, CIO friends of mine and I heard a very interesting perspective.
They said that, you know, transformation is. is a reality, it's going to happen. But specifically, uh, the, the CIOs and the CTOs are faced with a challenge, uh, that, you know, if there are problems, then, you know, if they need to be fixed and it take, it's going to take around three years and a million dollars, the board is not going to be patient with them.
Therefore, band aids are a reality. I was like taken back. I was like, really? You know, band aids are the reality of today and you're waiting for that to happen, but band aids are the reality of today. Is it what you also see?
[00:22:49] Ranjit: Yeah, for sure, Raj. I mean, you know, the, you think about it, right? The average CIO's, you know, horizon is between 18 to 24 months.
He or she is largely trying to get through the next two quarters and they don't necessarily want to embark on a five year journey with a 50 percent chance of success and bet their career on it. So they're saying, well, you know, let me get through this, let me get through my tenure, and then I, you know, strengthen my position, I'll go pick the right fights, but this isn't the hill I want to die on.
And especially one that is high visibility, goes up to the board. You know, not all the time, there's certainly CIOs with great intestinal fortitude that take the hill, have the right support from their business leadership and from the board. But when you don't have that level of support, then, you know, chances are you say, you know what, let me do the bare minimum in this area, focus on these two areas.
This is what's really going to drive the most impact and pick, you know, pick their battles that way.
[00:23:49] Raj: Got it. Okay.
[00:23:52] Ranjit: And we often get involved in those conversations, helping them things through the portfolio, you know, what will keep them out of trouble, but also drive the most amount of impact and make those smart choices because, you know, budgets are always constrained.
The list of things are always more than the budget can afford. So it's, you know, those trade offs.
[00:24:15] Raj: What's the best way of doing trade off, uh, Rajeev? Uh, specifically budget to technology, to, you know, the needs of various departments?
[00:24:25] Ranjit: You know, like any good consultant, I can come up with a framework that can show you how to do risk, reward, and what's the, but I won't, you know, bore you with that.
But I think for the most part, you know, there are certain things that you cannot go away with, which cause franchise risk and get you into jail, can shut down the franchise, et cetera. Those are non negotiable. Then the rest of the things, you know, CIOs typically have to make a judgment call and saying, which ones will drive the maximum business impact and or drive some efficiencies, they can plow back and fund their budget to go pick the next five.
So, you know, it's a sort of a, you know, part judgment call, you can't overly engineer these things. But you know, once you get out the mandatory stuff, then you got to focus on the other ones to say most impact and then go pick a few of those.
[00:25:13] Raj: Got it. Okay.
[00:25:16] Ian: I'm curious, just how do you think about like making investments and things like that on your end?
And like, what are, what are you excited to make investments in and, uh, how do you, you know, help your team make those decisions?
[00:25:29] Ranjit: Yeah, I mean, we're constantly looking at that and we have a rolling thunder sort of approach. So it's not like once and done because sometimes, you know, in the past we've done this, right?
That you just make your investments for the year and then you sit back and watch them, but we found that that's a little bit myopic because, you know, good ideas don't just come, you know, the 31st of May. They come through the year. That's our fiscal year. So they come through the year. So you want to be able to make sure there's an opportunity for people to be able to bring them forward and get them funded and all of those things.
So, so one, we do that continuously. Uh, two, you know, we kind of look at things two ways. One is doing things differently, which is really looking at our own business today and what can we tweak and what can we change and how can we do things better. But fundamentally the same things, but just differently leveraging VR and quantum and things like that, and then doing different things, which is higher risk, which is to be a totally different profile for the business in five years or 10 years, the risk profile of both those, like I said, it's different.
The first ones often drive some revenue, but certainly some efficiencies and things of that nature. The second one are net new businesses altogether, which could be a billion dollar franchise for us or 2 billion or something down the road, but it needs careful funding and careful sort of holding also to make sure that the antibodies don't, you know, destroy it inadvertently.
So that's kind of how we look at our portfolio in both those broad buckets. And then we go through a review process that continuously feeds, uh, the ideas. And then if you don't get, you know, sufficient outcome, then you also have the discipline to shut them down, which isn't always easy because everybody's always saying, give me another quarter and they'll get better.
But, you know, we are quite disciplined about when ideas run its course. When you put it on the back burner, come back and revisit it versus continue to keep funding it. That way we also make room for new ideas throughout the year.
[00:27:25] Raj: That's a very interesting perspective because one of the things, Ranjeet, I've seen is that when a new idea comes in, you know, people hold on to it, right?
Even if it's going downhill, uh, you know, people really hold on to it and don't let go. So you're saying that you have a framework in place which looks at it, and if it is going downhill, put a stop to it, right? So that you fail early.
[00:27:51] Ranjit: Yeah, exactly. Right. Fail early, but also be dispassionate about it because otherwise, you know, inevitably people get emotionally involved with their idea and want to continue to fund it, et cetera.
But somebody has to dispassionately look at those and say, no, you know, it's time to move on, or you do a zero based budget the next go around and you have to justify why it needs to continue to be funded.
Now, you know, obviously we, you know, if we can apply that to 80, 85 percent of our portfolio, we call it a success. There's always, you know, 10, 15 percent with our shades of gray where we got to figure out, you know, whether to keep it going, which looks like a bet we need to continue to make even though we don't have full information.
But largely we're trying to adhere to some sort of a construct like that. And many of my clients are like that as well.
[00:28:42] Ian: So I'm curious that obviously professional services industry has changed, you know, massively over the past four years. You got this globally distributed workforce. You're obviously handling all sorts of sensitive client data. You know, there's, um, uh, you know, all of this, you have, you know, more data and more information and people all over the place.
And how are you thinking about, uh, you know, infrastructure? How are you thinking about edge, uh, and, uh, and dealing with all of it?
[00:29:15] Ranjit: Yeah, I mean, it, it has changed tremendously and we expect it to continue to change. The other day we were having a conversation on what it must look like to be a professional services practitioner at Deloitte for the 178 years that we've been around and the kinds of changes those folks should have seen over the years with the Great Depression, the wars, you know, all kinds of other, you know, flu and famine.
So then, you know, in retrospect, you feel like, okay, well, you know, Uh, you know, our problems aren't that, that massive, but that said, we've certainly seen a bunch of change and data, as you rightly pointed out, is central to what we do, as you can imagine. A professional services firm does relies on data and insights and our ability to be able to execute against in our plan.
So we are, you know, have been over the last four years now, maybe even more really investing in the appropriate data platforms. So the right data is available on the right platform to the right people. And as we are finding out even more so with Gen AI, that unless your data is all sorted, classified, categorized, appropriately, you know, provisioned, Gen AI can only go so far.
So, you know, we're fortunate that we've had a place already and a bit of a running start, but we still have work to do. As we think about how do we get these, the data out, you know, we today have a data platform that subscribes to over a few hundred different data providers, we have up to, you know, 500 plus data sets that are available to our folks, depending on their particular need and the place of need and the time of need, we curate that data and make it available, but we also enrich it.
Based on other data sources that sometimes are proprietary data sources, sometimes are sensitive client data, sometimes are third party procured data, regulatory data, etc. as well. But based on the need and your level of, you know, um, I guess, you know, your privileges, you get, you know, appropriate access to different sorts of data.
And, and that is kind of how we do that through a, you know, advanced routing engine and now increasingly through Gen AI as well as a way to be able to use, you know, the engines to be able to source the right data to the right source to the right user.
[00:31:31] Raj: So, Ranjit, you know, specifically in professional services, how much of it, uh, you know, how much of a good, uh, personnel will have tacit knowledge and will depend on data?
[00:31:46] Ranjit: You know, I think, um, historically that's how it has been that, you know, you are an amazing tax professional because all this information is in, you know, in your brain and you've spent 35 years really focused on.
You know, uh, transfer pricing, and that's really, you know, your ability to be able to bring it to a client and your clients are buying you for that. You are the product, but over this last several years and, you know, and certainly the last four, but maybe the last decade, the product has shifted from being that personnel to being software, data, plus a real product in that sense.
Hence you see the turbo taxes of the world, et cetera. Now, of course, in our business, there's still a pretty significant dose of. Insight that's provided by the professional, including handholding and enterprise clients working in all other things that need to happen, kind of the non functionals. But the data itself has moved from being a person as the product to being more of a platform as a product and not everywhere, but we're certainly moving in that direction.
And, you know, if I fast forward the clock five years, I think that would be more the case. And it'll really be the application of that platform or the product to a particular client situation, which is where we'll spend most of our hours. But the product itself will probably get more codified and You know, as a service.
Got it. Makes sense. And the same thing I think is happening in so many other professions, right? Doctors are finding, you know, all the knowledge in their brain is finding its way to some chatbot or, you know, things like that in every industry for that matter. Financial services, trading, you know, all kinds of, you know, uh, advisory businesses as well, including, you know, financial advisors and things like that.
[00:33:39] Raj: I wish my financial advisor was. A brilliant one and make me a billionaire, but I haven't found that bot yet.
[00:33:48] Ranjit: Me too. If you find one, you know, um, please do direct them my way or it my way or them my way.
[00:33:56] Raj: 100%. And you do it too. You'll be my best buddy after that. Yes, for sure.
[00:34:02] Ranjit: I'm still going to find my financial advisor.
I think he's still not come back from summer break. So, you know, that's the other challenge.
[00:34:09] Ian: Well, they're doing great at least. That's, that's good. Yeah. How do you think CIOs should be thinking about, um, business strategy as it relates to IT infrastructure modernization?
[00:34:22] Ranjit: You know, um, I think a couple of things, right, alluding to some of the points I made earlier, Ian, first is that.
The rate of change is going to continue to accelerate. We know that almost for a fact, and there are implications for that. That's why I'll just mention these and then come back on how that should inform their strategy. The second, of course, technology continues to be the bedrock of most businesses and increasingly so.
And then three, that most businesses will go through a massive disruption in the next decade, if not more, and that may even be a continuous, you know, disruption, ongoing transformation, et cetera. So those, that has implications on how you think about your strategy. So as I think about strategy, address the first one, while you have to have appropriate strategy, it has to be flexible and nimble.
So you can't necessarily. Put all your eggs in one basket and then wait for the market to shift because it will shift quickly enough. And by that, I mean, when you're making a decision about, you know, do I have all public data centers? Do I have a combination of public and private? How much do I invest in GPUs?
What kind of private LLM should I think about? How should I think about even quantum? Should I be investing in it today or not? You know, our advice would be, when you think about the infrastructure in general, you need to be able to create it in modular fashion. So you can switch up, switch down, swap out, et cetera, over time, and it's not one big behemoth, which will become that much harder for you to pivot as you look at new tech and the tech life cycle or the refresh cycle continues to shrink.
So that's one. Two, I think the fact that technology is the product certainly means that tech infrastructure budgets will continue to grow. And I think CIOs in general and CFOs and business leaders have yet to come to grips with that. They haven't been able to truly document or understand where is the budget shrinking because of efficiencies and where is the budget expanding because of new demand, and because those two get intermingled so much, it's They only see a budget increasing and they don't have the sophistication to make the difference between those two.
I think that's a really critical element to this because we will continue to see new demands skyrocket and the existing demand one should be able to squeeze and squeeze and drive more efficiencies, but it should throttle the new demand. Then, you know, you're not in a good place or will not be in a good competitive place three to five years out.
And then the last point about disruption, I think increasingly from horizontal technology groups between the CIOs group and the business tech group and the infrastructure group, I think we need to break that silo, those silos down and look at more product platform groups that are front to back, particularly to your, you know, opening line about convergence and how, you know, connected world is getting or interconnected or hyperconnected world, the ability to be able to connect front to back on here's the The experience on a payments platform, here's the underlying application, the platform, the infrastructure, and that is owned by one person who's then also continuously evolving and innovating on that platform, but also responsible for the P& L front to back.
I think is the way to go. Then you can also make deliberate decisions about do I need an ACH or a wire transfer or some other product, or do I switch it, switch it off and turn on a new one and gives you natural to be agile and do buy, hold, sell across your portfolio. So I think all those three things need to be in some form be baked into a business strategy around infrastructure.
[00:37:55] Raj: Yeah, that's a, that's a very interesting perspective. Uh, you know, you talked about. Uh, specifically, uh, you know, throttling the new areas, uh, you know, that's not going to make sense for the future. And you also said that, you know, existing. Uh, areas or operations, how do you generate efficiencies, right? Now, I've also seen this, uh, getting confused amongst a lot of clients of mine.
Uh, is there any tips for our, for the listeners in terms of how to kind of, you know, segregate them and ensure that they are not kind of confusing both of them?
[00:38:35] Ranjit: Yeah, for sure. I mean, there are now pretty sophisticated models. We look at your product portfolio to understand where is the product increasing its infrastructure and technology needs because the volumes are going up.
So, for instance, you know, you're a credit card company and you do payments with your various merchants and if your payment transaction sits on, One particular part of the infrastructure and you've gone from, you know, I don't know, you know, 500 million transactions a day to a trillion transactions a day, then you know very well that that's, you know, new demand, but on an existing platform.
But then you launched a new, you know, payment platform that is B2C between, you know, a bunch of different consumers that are retail consumers. And you now know that that's a brand new infrastructure and you're going to see growth over time. So that would be new demand in my mind. I think where it gets gray is when people are not able to look at it front to back from a product perspective.
And what often happens, and you know, I'm sure you see this all the time, Raj, is that at the backend. The only thing, you know, CIOs see is their overall storage price, you know, gone consumption going up or their infrastructure, GPU or CPU consumption going up and they don't have an ability to be able to tag it back to a specific business product.
So it just becomes one big hodgepodge. And as a result, they're constantly trying to defend that with the business owners who are saying, you know what, you know, again, you've increased your storage price on me or your, you know, so it doesn't come together. Under the, you know, product P& L or something like that.
So this takes some discipline to get there. But once those clients of mine that have really gotten to, you know, ABC costing or product pricing, product profitability, have really reaped the benefits of this. And we'll continue to do that because, you know, it's a one time exercise. But then once you're on the other side of this, then it's, it's easier to be able to manage and forecast and budget and plan.
[00:40:31] Raj: And Ranjit, this is very interesting. I've not really heard a lot of my clients doing this. Uh, do you also suggest that, you know, if there's a new product which is being launched, right, which is in its infancy, needs some love and care. Uh, should it be treated differently on the infrastructure or should it be given, you know, obviously, it will not be given a different new infrastructure, it will have to be on the shared infrastructure like everybody else, whether it's data center, storage, blah, blah, blah.
Uh, should it be given, uh, you know, a special care, is, is that a best practice or, you know, it's with everybody else, but, you know, looking at, you know, the growth opportunities which is there, it will be, uh, you know, maybe treated a bit differently, uh, or how is it?
[00:41:23] Ranjit: You know, I, I personally think that that is the right answer on two levels, Raj.
One is that when you're launching a new business or a new product. Likely is not, there are some antibodies today in the system that may or may not support the growth of that. Whether it's channel conflict or somebody else's incentives conflict with the incentives of theirs. So you start a new ACH product and you've been doing wire transfers, chances are many of your wire transfer customers will move to ACH.
And the wire transfer folks will start to feel the pain, et cetera. So regardless, there is a case to be made to say, if you're starting new businesses, you should do them in a greenfield state so that the antibodies don't come in the way you can create its own channel, particularly if it's going into new markets and new products.
That's one. On the infrastructure side, also, I would make the case, and which is why cloud, popularity of cloud took off, and it did, Was every time people wanted to launch a new product, they didn't want to go to the existing infrastructure team. But it would take them 60 weeks to get anything provisioned.
And not to mention they'd get burdened with all kinds of, you know, allocation, things of that nature. They'd rather just went to, you know, a public cloud provider, an AWS or a Google or somebody, and then just spun it up. And while it was growing, they were only paying by the drink. So as a result, till it got to some scale, they were only paying marginal cost of that usage.
Versus when they went to the internal infrastructure teams, they got hit with a big bill that would kill it right at inception. You know, the cost of that would, you know, and totally overwhelm the product profitability. So I'm of the view that certainly for newer products, R& D, where you're launching, you're trying to get to MVP and scale it, it is better to do an arm's length construct, you know, and then over time when it matures, it can come back into the mothership.
[00:43:12] Raj: Interesting, okay.
[00:43:15] Ian: Well Ranjit, It's been awesome having you on the show today. Uh, we, unfortunately, like we got to get out of here. You were, you know, you're a busy guy. Um, is there any final thoughts or any final piece of advice to, you know, other technology leaders, CTOs, Chief Strategy Officers out there on, uh, on how they can, uh, you know, improve in 2025?
[00:43:37] Ranjit: Look, it's been really fun being on this chat. Thank you again for inviting me. And if you ever invite me again, you know, it'd be an honor to be back on. In terms of your question, I think. The one thing I would say is that, you know, um, folks in my role and my seat need to be bold and move fast. I think, you know, it's easier said than done, but we get all caught up in existing bureaucracy and pace of change and all the naysayers and why we shouldn't do it and all the things that I'd risk.
But I don't, you know, for us to be looking back a decade later, kicking ourselves that we didn't take, you know, swing for the fences, didn't take our chances, didn't, you know, be part of what is really truly historic, this decade will be a real travesty. So all I would say is that, you know, this is our time, you know, we should go out and swing for the fences.
We can really make a difference and drive some material, you know, historic change in the world. Fantastic.
[00:44:35] Ian: Couldn't agree more. Thanks again so much for joining. Thank you both for having me. This was wonderful.
[00:44:41] Raj: Thank you, Ranjit. Thanks, Ian.
[00:44:45] Ian: Thank you for joining us on Hyperconnected Journeys, where we explore the minds of technology innovators, future proofing their digital infrastructure.
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