Ahead of Gartner Symposium in Barcelona on November 4-7, Ashish K Gupta, Chief Growth Officer at HCLTech, highlights that aligning technology strategies with organizational goals has never been more important. In this article, he shares his perspectives on how enterprises can create an effective tech roadmap to support their growth ambitions, with a particular focus on the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI), as well as the critical role of engineering excellence.
“Gartner Symposium is the premier event for Gartner in Europe,” says Gupta. “The quality of the discussion is more future-looking and strategic than most events, with the best analysts debating the current and upcoming changes impacting CIOs and technology departments.”
For HCLTech, this platform presents a valuable opportunity to showcase how the company's deep engineering heritage and capabilities can serve as a strategic accelerator for enterprises navigating their digital transformation journeys.
Moving from productivity to strategic enabler
Gupta explains that the role of technology has evolved significantly, transitioning from a productivity function to a strategic driver of business growth. “In the past, technology was largely focused on organizing back-office data and enabling productivity across the enterprise. But in the last three to five years, we've seen a shift towards digital transformation, where technology is now helping to break down silos and drive agility and responsiveness across all aspects of the business.”
This shift has been further amplified by the growing importance of AI and more recently, GenAI, which Gupta believes will play a crucial role across three key areas: enhancing enterprise productivity, driving real-time agility and decision-making and enabling entirely new business models. “AI is going to be a game-changer in making the enterprise more productive, ensuring greater agility and responsiveness, and ultimately unlocking new avenues for growth through innovative business models,” he says.
Differentiating with engineering excellence
Despite the obvious benefits, the rise of GenAI, with its probabilistic nature, requires a fundamentally different approach to engineering and deployment. “When you're producing technology that is customer-facing, the quality of engineering and the guardrails you put in place become exponentially more important. With generative AI, the data, training and overall system design must be meticulously crafted to ensure the outputs are not biased or inappropriate,” says Gupta.
This is where HCLTech’s engineering heritage and expertise come into play. “HCLTech has had an Engineering and R&D division, which is now the world's largest, since 1992. This means we have a deep understanding of how to engineer products for consumer-facing environments, where the implications of getting it wrong can have significant revenue, profit and reputational impacts,” he adds.
There are several examples of HCLTech’s innovative work, including the company's work in creating chips for Silicon Valley to software which goes into implants in the human body and powers aircrafts or consumer durables or make automobiles safe and self-driving, or the platform created for sports teams which enthuse, inform and bring the power of sport in real time to billions of sports fans. “These are examples of how our engineering excellence has enabled us to create transformative solutions that have a tangible human impact.”
Looking ahead, Gupta believes that HCLTech’s engineering pedigree will be a key differentiator in the market, particularly as enterprises grapple with the complexities of deploying AI and GenAI solutions. “The quality of engineering required for consumer-facing technology, and for probabilistic technologies like generative AI, is exponentially higher than what is typically seen in enterprise IT departments. This is where HCLTech’s decades-long focus on engineering can provide a significant advantage,” he continues.
Identifying the right solution and provider
Ahead of Gartner Symposium, Gartner conducted a pre-event survey of attendees. The survey found that enterprises are finding it challenging to identify the right solutions and providers to solve their problems and support their ambitions.
As business and technology leaders seek to identify the right solutions and partners to address their growth priorities, Gupta emphasizes the importance of clearly communicating HCLTech's engineering capabilities and the tangible impact they can have. “We need to do a better job of articulating our case studies and showcasing how our engineering heritage translates into the ability to deliver innovative, high-quality solutions that drive real business outcomes.”
He adds: “Gartner Symposium will provide the perfect platform to showcase how HCLTech’s engineering pedigree and innovative solutions can help organizations unlock new avenues for growth and stay ahead of the curve in an increasingly digital-driven world.”
