Joyjeet Bose, Senior Vice-President, Tata Teleservices Limited

Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) is empowering enterprises in order to develop deep digital capabilities and build operational efficiency. Joyjeet Bose, senior vice-president, Tata Teleservices Limited, talks about the company’s key focus areas and growth plans…

What were the key business highlights for TTBS in 2020?

With the enhanced use of digital tools by enterprises during the pandemic, we provided them with bespoke, secured solutions to build resilience as they repurposed themselves to maintain business continuity and growth. We strengthened our suite of work-from-anywhere solutions to meet the burgeoning demands of the hybrid workforce. The solutions included hosted interactive voice response, as well as hosted PBX, audio and web conferencing solutions, and international bridging services. We have recently introduced Smartflo, a cloud communication suite that enables businesses to communicate with their customers any time, anywhere, in a secured manner across various platforms of voice and data. Cyberattacks such as phishing and ransomware have become far more pervasive and sophisticated, particularly during the pandemic. To address this, we have enhanced our cybersecurity portfolio to provide a cloud content security platform.

How has the Covid-19 pandemic impacted your business?

The fundamental shift in the business ecosystem, which is now dominated by remote working, has pushed enterprises to reboot their business models. We are seeing a sort of digital reawakening, wherein businesses have realised that digital is not just good to have, but an absolute imperative for survival, growth and market leadership. With respect to customers, the major challenge that businesses have been struggling with has been transitioning their workforce to online platforms to implement a work-from-home policy and ensure continuity of work. TTBS quickly adopted and created the necessary changes required in its product portfolio for digitalisation across its remote access for data, voice and collaboration platforms. We have seen a significant adoption of cloud-based solutions, collaboration solutions, artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT), and data management solutions that allow enterprises to integrate, secure and manage data efficiently. Despite the necessary technological advancements and expertise being available in the market, the vast majority of the SME workforce is still not equipped to utilise the various advantages offered by such initiatives, largely due to the lack of the right infrastructure, awareness and business continuity plans to address the needs of new normal. Businesses that have executed optimum risk mitigation strategies to face the pandemic and acclimatise to any future crisis stand to emerge stronger than their competition. The emerging future of work, as we can clearly see, is being driven by a network economy defined by cost efficiency, digital agility and trust.

What are some of the key enterprise trends that will shape the post-Covid world?

The Covid-19 pandemic has acted as a tipping point for digital transformation of the workplace, and we expect this to accelerate further as technology is playing a huge role in enabling businesses to run remotely. Some of the key trends are:

  • Cloud, IoT and AI: Cloud will continue to take centre stage in the recovery from the pandemic, given its benefits of improved accessibility, scalability and flexibility. With stricter norms for social distancing and continued restrictions on travel, newage technologies such as IoT and AI will see more use cases and enterprises investing in them for long-term benefits.
  • Data and user privacy: We will see the rise of resilient and safe enterprises, as businesses are increasingly adopting cost-effective and comprehensive security-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions that are tailored for them.
  • Reimagined customer experience: The virtual presence of customers has assumed greater significance in the wake of the minimised physical interaction environment. Adopting an omnichannel approach has become a critical business imperative

What will be your key focus areas and growth strategy for 2021?

The Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped business environments, with digital-tech capabilities gaining prominence in order to ensure business growth. Digital agility has become a critical factor for the enterprise workforce to communicate and collaborate in the new normal of working. At TTBS, our strategic focus as a progressive digital catalyst has been on delivering greater business value to our customers. Having been in the enterprise space for around two decades, we have a deep understanding of our customers across industry segments. Our growth plans are centred on strengthening our portfolio of services, especially in the areas of SaaS, infrastructure-as-a-service, IoT and cloud, while at the same time enhancing our fibre network, deploying the latest IT tools and building business applications across the industry segments that we serve, and augmenting our channel reach and capability to cover as much of the small and medium business footprint as possible.