An IIM - Ahmedabad alumnus, Sharad has worked with companies such as TCS, ICICI Bank, L&T Finance, and HDFC General Insurance, to name a few.

Digital is ubiquitous and superfast. Transformation through digital is buzzword leading to huge benefits in productivity and disrupting the way organisations have been conducting their businesses. SMAC, IoT, AI, RPA and AR are in demand tools for digital transformation. Organisations have left with very limited choice but to adopt. Though adoption is the key to success, most companies are failing to change. Company culture has been observed as second largest hurdle for the success of digital transformation as per Futurum research(Newman, 2018)during a study in 2018. First hurdle observed was external to organisations and it was largely influenced by “availability of good technology companies” to support transformation initiatives. These two hurdles would be crucial and important worries for CIOs to ponder upon.

As there are many trends emerging to transform business and revenue models, technology tools focusing on people has been very interesting to get enlightened with. In this context, if one is forced to choose a path breaking and revolutionary application or trend then, ‘Chat Tool’ on smartphone would be my first choice.

Chat Tools have changed the way of human communi-cation and we aren’t communicating only with words anymore. This has been the largest and single disruptor in digital transformation. During 2016, I had presented(Jambukar, 2016)to a small group of IT professionals on disruptive technologies where I spoke on chat tool and its impacts on future enterprise and it has been quite a trend to follow for all the CIOs.

In country such as India, approximately more than 15

million sales people are engaged in retail sales activities including feet on street, worksite and walk in counters across various industries such as retail, financial services(BFSI), automobile, real estate, information technology, logistics and education. Chat Tool which has been a personal use has now become Chat 2.0. This chat 2.0 has the potential to transform future sales organisations and may save up to $10 billion over three years altogether for all Indian Corporates.

Future Digital Enterprise for Sales Function- A Possible Case
Here is an organisation with 25000 employees that is engaged in banking business. Most communication takes place between front end and back end staff to fulfil various services to the customer. Sales being the major thrust for any such organisation, it has up to 20000 employees engaged in sales process and acquiring new business.

With strong focus on profitability and productivity, technology team implemented chat 2.0 solution for all sales employees. Sales person now need not go to office and simply start his/her day from home and probably earliest of the day. Day starts by logging in company chat messenger and all the tasks for the day including prospect appointments, target achieved versus planned, competition news and product information is available. As and when existing appointments are completed, minutes are captured in chat along with geo location. Target sales vs. actual sales are available at beginning and end of the day as chat message.

One of the privileged sales people, James was very happy and shared ‘It has been wonderful way of doing sales. I was so much burdened with laptop and mails and dragging on my sales appointments. My sales conversions are proportional to my prospect visits and I was faltering on the same. With emails out and new chat solution, everything is at my fingertips. Product trainings are available on video. I can easily capture prospect leads and meeting notes while I converse with customer and while travelling. I can even record my meetings and what customer has to say’.

This could happen in your organisation and certainly in near future. Are you ready for the change?

Next sections will provide you what is required to accomplish such an experience and merits and demerits of adopting chat as a disruptor.