An innovative initiative launched by the company is reinventing its basic operations through AI, machine learning, and significant technological improvements.
Gyan Pandey Head Digital CDO, Voltas India
Voltas has implemented a host of innovation and IT refresh initiatives under its ambitious digital transformation programme, driven by the top leadership and the board. FE CIO speaks with Gyan Pandey, Chief Digital Officer, Voltas, to get a low-down on this innovative programme internally called "V-vartana", meaning transformation. Here are the edited excerpts from the discussion.
It's been almost three years since you joined Voltas. Your previous stint was with a big pharma organisation. How do you compare both the roles ?
As pharma is a highly regulated and compliance-heavy industry, anything you do in IT goes through very rigorous validations. In pharma, regulations and compliances are the key drivers for any technology solutions.
Even if a POC (Proof Of Concept) is successful but it fails in terms of compliance, it's definitely a no-go. Therefore, the key to any technology implementation in the pharma industry hinges on it getting accepted on the quality and regulatory sides.
It is a completely different world when it comes to consumer durables. For a company like Voltas, which has 30,000 plus touchpoints across dealers, distributors, retailers, and e-commerce, it becomes imperative to focus on the overall customer experience. The customer experience is not only limited to sales experience but also extends to post-sales experience and the product experience.
As CX is highly dynamic, IT here becomes far more agile as compared to the pharma industry. However, there are certain commonalities between the two in the areas of cybersecurity, IT infrastructure, automation, and ERP.
How would you describe your journey at Voltas, rolling out various digital transformation initiatives?
During COVID, when most organizations, even those without a strong IT footprint, took a big leap in terms of transformation, Voltas, unfortunately, couldn't match the same speed and rigor. So, there was a focus on rebuilding this capability at a very high level, making the entire IT landscape first standardized, agile, and digital.
Accordingly, we worked in parallel with the businesses. Voltas works in various segments: product business, engineering services business, and project business. We looked at how we can align and enable those businesses not only to do automation but also to bring in efficiency where they can optimize costs, in terms of, how we can win over more customers, and provide customer delight.
Voltas has undertaken a major digital transformation programme, V-vartana, what does it entail ?
V-vartana is an ongoing journey. Since the last three years, we have embarked on a very ambitious digital transformation roadmap, with the blessings of the leadership and the board, which we internally call V-vartana, meaning transformation.
We are taking a parallel-track approach to digital transformation. In divisions with higher digital maturity, we are already leveraging AI and machine learning for predictive maintenance and customer engagement. Meanwhile, in areas where core processes remain manual, our priority is to digitize these operations. Additionally, we are selectively experimenting with new technologies wherever there is clear potential for value and return on investment. Overall, our main focus remains on digitizing core processes, with advanced technologies like AI and ML being adopted in specific areas as we progress.
What kind of technology refresh have you undertaken as a part of V-vartana ?
In these three years, if I have to count some of the things that are very unique to Voltas, I will say that we did a couple of complex technology platform upgrades.
One of the major initiatives has been our migration to S/4HANA. Voltas was running on SAP ECC platform with 300 plus interfaces, more than 60 partners, and over 20,000 custom objects. We did a complete migration seamlessly to S/4HANA on RISE. We went live in November 2024 without a single issue. This was one of the most complex transformations or upgrades within the country, not only within the group.
Similarly, for around a decade, Voltas had been running on Google Workspace. We migrated to the M365 platform with around 400 TB of data.
These platform upgrades also helped us in implementing solutions related to Order to cash (O2C), Procure to pay (P2P), record to report, and hire-to-retire, and that journey is on.
What are your plans for this year?
This year, our primary focus is on deploying multiple new applications—not just to upgrade legacy systems but to ensure that most of our platforms are modernized. The goal is to shift from systems designed primarily for transactions to ones where data and analytics are integral, enabling deeper insights and more informed decision-making.
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