Although online and digital consumerism is a popular trend now, that does not mean people do not go shopping, dining, and partying physically. Also, there is no denying that digital consumerism provides the utmost comfort, ease, and convenience apart from safety and security; what it lacks are a physical experience and a personal feel. This is where the retail network of shopping malls, retail chains, restaurants, etc., comes into play.
These ambient, happening, and vibrant places guarantee customers a seamless, comfortable physical experience with a smooth and convenient personal appeal. Before the inception of ideas 4 Transformation (i4T)–a trusted technology Services and Solutions partner–all these retail brands, chains, network stores, restaurants, shopping malls, hypermarkets, etc., have had no substantial methods of receiving tailor-made IT support models.
Brands were also unable to evaluate the usage of their network stores, nor they had any way to review whether the store was offering the right mix that is attractive to the local demographics.
Many large retail business brands have considered various retail tech solutions to ensure that no resources are wasted and no opportunities are missed, but with the advent of i4T six years back—ultimately—these brands, Burger King, Metro Brands, KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Dominos, Subway, Tim Hortons, YUM, Shoppers Stop, Barbeque Nation, Absolute Barbeque, Haldiram’s, Crosswords, Vishal Mega Mart, and many more, chose i4T’s as their preferred choice for Smart Retail Solutions like People Counting, Video Analytics, Mobility and for IT Management/Infrastructure Services, and all the myriad of futuristic solutions due to the multitude of features a single platform includes.
At the helm of i4T is Mr Rajesh Saboo, its Founder and CEO, who shares, “Our focus has been to provide solutions for the large retail businesses that have got pan-India presence.”
A Futuristic Leadership Acumen—
Rajesh is an industry veteran and has been influencing Business Transformation, Innovative Technology Solutions adoption, and Change Management agents in leading corporate houses like Future Group, Raymond Limited, Ashok Piramal Group, Aditya Birla Group and Wadia Group.
Rajesh says, “I spent almost 28 years in the corporate working with these big companies and organizations. Out of my total experience last 20 years, I was in leadership positions and was part of transformation initiatives of Future Group, Raymond Ltd etc.”
Before starting i4T, Rajesh was part of the Senior Management Team of Future Group, working as Sr. Vice President – of IT Services, responsible for the Technology and Communication needs of the entire group for Retail and Supply Chain. He was also part of the leadership team of a strategic way forward.
He has an enriching 34+ years of the overall experience, out of which 28 years of Industry exposure in Information Technology, Retail, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Logistics and Business Services and almost now six years as a successful leader of i4T.
Rajesh mentions, “During my time with the corporate while speaking with biggest vendors; I realized that although these vendors have more margins, there was a visibly vast disconnect between what they were selling and what the buyers actually demanded.”
Rajesh informs, “So, I thought using my huge experience to address this disconnect. I must form a versatile technology Solutions and Services organization that specializes in domains such as retail, malls, warehouses, QSR, and smart buildings.”
Established around these core areas of expertise, i4T’s portfolio of services includes Consulting, Software development and implementation, and IT Managed Services, Technical Service Desk, IT Program Management, etc. Each service i4T provide is unique because it is customized and optimized perfectly to target solution to initiate, implement and expedite business needs to reality.
Rajesh adds, “Our business philosophy is molded by the belief that in today’s dynamic and ever-evolving world, a simple combination of services cannot possibly satisfy your business’s unique needs. We differentiate ourselves by ensuring that our combinations of services result in cutting-edge solutions that contribute towards helping your business needs and creating sustainable businesses.”
Rajesh has won many industry awards and accolades for Transformation initiatives leading to Business transformation, cost optimization, business operation effectiveness and technology innovation from independent houses like IDG, IDC and CORE. He is a firm believer in simplicity and speed in all spheres of life and is an eternal optimist.
Eternal Optimism of Speed and Simplicity
Recollecting their initial days, Rajesh shares that they began their journey in a 1BHK office situated in a small residential complex of Thane, with a team who used to do everything multi-tasking from operations, finance, MIS, and customer care, to HR, IT, and admin just like a startup.
“One thing which I was very sure as I continue to cherish is to build an i4T brand with a strong recall value for the customers with its key USPs of speed and simplicity,” with speed Rajesh means that anything they do, they want to do it in a much shorter time than probably what other vendors or service providers could do it.
“At the same time, there is a strong belief in our organization that every problem has a simple solution,” says Rajesh adding that when you do not understand a problem properly, you try solving it in a complicated fashion. At any point in time, none of the customers would accept it. Even if the management buys your complicated solution, it will fail in the implementation because end-users are not that technical or tech-savvy.
“This USP of simplicity is what we believe in, which I strongly followed when I was a part of the Future Group and Mr Kishor Biyani, my mentor, always talked about these two things. And this is how we’re doing it, and it has been helping us to create a differentiator for our organization with all our customers purchasing from us,” reveals Rajesh.
When a typical IT Managed Services transitions from one vendor to another, a big vendor generally used to take 90 days for transition, so the customer has to pay an additional cost for 90 days because they have to register with the new vendor while discontinuing the current vendor.
“However, we take pride in some of the biggest transitions to the tune of 500 stores, 800 stores in less than 45 days. Our standard transition time is 30 days, and most of the time, we try not to charge our customer or even if we do, it is a very nominal change, and this is our commitment,” says Rajesh, adding that they have a firm belief in their PMO–Project/Program Management Office–consisting of Program Managers, Business Analyst, Technical team–a team which is eyes and ears of the organization.
A Benchmark of Visibility and Transparency
Rajesh says, “They create visibility of what we do to the customers in a very transparent level, and then they insist and answer the customers’ calls daily. And on a monthly and quarterly basis, they give proper tech presentations and ensure i4T creates a journey of transformation with our customers. Our objective is not to increase the monetary value of our contract, but to add value to our contract with what we’ve done.”
For example, if it would take ten people to give a contract X value, maybe ten people can do more services in the same contract value with a limited increase in cost. So, per resource cost will come down. Rajesh explains, “If 100 stores are giving 100 rupees, then additional ten stores can add two rupees to our contract.” So, i4T is taking an increased number of stores of 10% percent in addition to the cost of 2% of its contract value for the customers.
He feels, “That is our belief to never run after the customer and have lots of customers. We believe that we will have fewer customers but happy customers and try to give them multiple services/Solutions under one umbrella like IT Managed Services, New store opening services and Remote Support Services (Technical Services Desk) from the backend, Projects: Application Migration and Asset Management. etc., so the customer’s management cost comes down. That way, multiple services to lesser customers, to add more value.”
A Smart Evolution in Retail Management
Presently, i4T has its own presence in 70+ cities supporting in 300 plus cities. i4T steadily has built a happy customer base. Instead of offering solutions like traditional players, i4T offers a tech-integrated platform which offers personalized, specialized solutions to its clients with retail store chains spread over the country. Every client has its own dashboard integrated with people counter, billing counter, video-analytics tools, and AI-ML integrated solutions so that the retail businesses will have a clear picture of their end-users and can serve them more efficiently in the future.
Rajesh elaborates, “We have brought a smart evolution in retail management like we offer solutions per the customer’s needs and budget. Suppose a retail business has 500 stores with a fixed cost per store, so we offer a solution spread across these 500 stores and then pinpoint regularly stores with a higher number of issues and bring in visibility. This guides our customers on their re-modelling structure like for their payment, what kind of services they are getting, etc.”
In terms of modern technology adoption, Rajesh gives various examples of i4T’s video analytics solution in which CCTV footage, algorithmic data, and high-resolution data are collected, analyzed, and compared to provide a clearer picture to restaurants, retail businesses, and billing counters.
“We don’t develop AI and ML integrated solutions, rather; we have created a strong partner ecosystem with FootfallCam™, Magic Mirror, AIRSEC™, Posi Flex, AI company and many other technology partners to address and achieve the KPIs. Thanks to our tech-integrated platforms, we are working on cutting-edge technologies to create our differentiator,” says Rajesh adding, “They are also creating a democratic culture for their employees, workforce, CXO community, and partners, where people are their focus.”
Turning Challenges into Opportunities
When probed about challenges, Rajesh says that challenges are opportunities for him and his team. Thus, if constant workforce churn could be an issue for other companies, he believes once an employee has spent considerable time in i4T, instead of paying them a huge amount of salaries which will affect their own operational cost, they prefer the person leaving so that they will get the opportunity to hire fresh talent and ensure the cost of services are also managed. However, we ensure that a proper balance of experience, trained and fresh talent is maintained; we have tied up with some technical institutes for our resourcing needs and continue our focus on workforce training in terms of technology and customer service.
Another challenge is saying no to some earlier peer group members for onboarding them as customers because as a retail solution provider i4T concentrates more on fewer players rather than having too many clients. This is nice problem to have but to be dealt with very carefully without offending; that’s a challenge because, with the exposure to the CXO Group in my previous tenure, I need to keep everybody happy but at the same time don’t serve everyone and spoil the quality of services.
“We are typical not vendors who will come and sell what they want to sell. We try to understand the problem of CXO community. That’s our aim which we are trying to achieve,” expresses Rajesh.
Fostering A Network of Champions
Being an experienced leader, Rajesh says there is a huge gap between the Business/users’ expectations and what is provided in the IT products service industry. Only coming of freshers with fancy college degrees from IITs and IIMs and starting their startups, out of which most of them go out of business in five to ten years, is not sustainable. Instead coming of mature people with 10-20 years of experience and expertise behind them, giving the best quality service is the need of the hour.
Further, there is a need to create a common platform for like-minded Retail IT industry veterans who want to provide the right products, solutions and quality services to Mid and large-size PAN India retail businesses.
Thus, Rajesh’s advice for the budding aspirants is, along with solving smaller issues and problems and giving solutions to many, they must concentrate on creating an ecosystem which will integrate multifunction solutions and bring everybody on a broad single platform. It’s a dream and desire to be fulfilled.
i4T’s Pan-India Web of Partners
Presently, i4T supports 5,000 different sorts of retail businesses across 300+ cities. And it has its engineers in 70-odd cities who are 100% on the company’s payroll, so they enjoy all the benefits as regular employees. Rajesh conveys, “We don’t believe in having an outsourcing model that we tie up with some franchisees, small partners locally. Wherever we find the right talent, we engage with them directly; then we hire them; we train them technically. We have a proper mechanism of managing and monitoring them.”
That’s how Rajesh and his Leadership team are building the organization, and their focus is to increase their footprint all over India, reaching tier 3 and tier 4 towns this year; they want to expand their support to 11,000 plus retail stores. From 300 plus employee, they want to expand to 500 by December.22.
i4T vision of 11000 Stores, 1100 Cities and 1100 Team members with 11 Support offices is the key focus in a couple of years.
Creating a Robust Back-End Support System
To provide services to 11K+ stores, there needed a strong back-end ecosystem created by i4T in the form of a fully functional 24×7×365 Technical Service Desks network. And Rajesh wants to expand this network of Remote Managed Service businesses with high availability form multiple cities currently operational in Delhi and Bengaluru. According to Rajesh, this is a significant change for two primary reasons: The first one is cost-effectiveness and the second one is the speed of Support.
“Both will complement each other to have a better experience and faster resolutions for their problems,” says Rajesh giving the example of the feeling ten years ago when people felt that due to the coming of online retail businesses and eCommerce players, physical stores would go out of fashion. However, today, all eCommerce players have their online and offline stores. In the same way, Rajesh says that Remote Support Services and physical Field Support Care can both complement each other to give better satisfaction to the customer.
Ensuring a Data-Driven Future
“Our next big focus is to create the technical support ecosystem making it more effective. Another thing is that today we have abundant retail data with us. We know what is happening across pan-India, across various formats, restaurants, retail businesses, etc. I want to create an ecosystem where we will have insights about this data and start focusing on what’s next for the industry,” states Rajesh.
Currently, most people go for these paid services; they do some research, send some people who collect some sample data, then they extrapolate that data, analysis, and then they come to trends, what is going to happen.
Rajesh’s take on this is to use whatever data, analysis, and insights available and help the industry in its working to have more data-driven decisions rather than one-time data-based decisions. E.g., understanding demographics and customer segmentation to decide where should a restaurant location be situated that would drive revenue for it.
“Data-driven decision making is an offshoot of this business, which is I am doing, that we will want to focus on.
Our further focus is to create a tech-based service model for businesses like OLA, Ubers, book and pay services.
Also, we want to reach the aspiring population of India, which is in smaller cities and towns,” concludes Rajesh.
