The primary purpose of Wipro'ss Digital & Big Bets Analyst Relations day in Boston at the end of November was to outline its digital and automation strategy, including presenting some startup partners Wipro is working with (and has invested in through Wipro Ventures) to help drive forward this strategy. Wipro believes its key technology bets will enable it to help clients reinvent their businesses as digital businesses.

Here I take a look at Wipro’s four ‘big bet’ initiatives, with examples from the financial services industry, and provide feedback from two of Wipro’s startup partners.

The four big bets

Wipro has selected four key areas as its big bets:

Digital

Its digital big bet is around the application of technologies and methods to human interaction, especially customer contact. Wipro presented a case study of a mortgage lender whose legacy mortgage origination process was long, complex, and difficult to navigate for originators and borrowers. The result was a very low conversion rate for borrowers who started an application.

Key components of the solution were mapping processes, bringing in stakeholders to discuss challenges and preferences, designing an improved customer journey, and implementing the platform. The result was improved NPS and conversion rates.

Cloud

Cloud delivery is a foundational bet which underpins all of Wipro’s automation initiatives. Wipro presented a case study of a major financial data provider which used an inflexible legacy platform for its data services business. The platform was inflexible, costly, and operating on aging infrastructure.

Wipro was able to re-platform the legacy apps to AWS while doubling memory and servers. AWS delivery enabled improved BCDR. The result was a 64% reduction in OPEX and a one-year payback.  

Cybersecurity

Here, Wipro emphasized the importance of making it simpler and easier for clients to manage their cyber risks. Currently, Wipro has ten platforms and is increasing the number of partners it works with to address this ongoing challenge. With reference to the Equifax breach, Wipro stressed that the most important feature of cybersecurity is not to perfectly secure the environment, an unattainable goal, but business continuity after a breach (with continuity requiring minimization of operational losses and trust with stakeholders). It stressed that setting client expectations, using the latest techniques, and providing customers with high levels of transparency are the key elements.

Industrial and engineering services

Here, Wipro is helping clients design products, improve them, and bring them to market. This is typically applicable to manufacturing clients, not financial clients.

The viewpoint from Wipro’s startup partners

I interviewed representatives from two startups Wipro has invested in, both of which are security vendors with large financial services client bases. They spoke to the value of the Wipro relationship and how they deliver value to clients:

Demisto

Demisto is a security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) provider. 25% of their clients are F500 companies, including tier one banks and payment processors. Their platform has three key elements:

• Case management and tracking tool
• Automation to accelerate response time
• Real-time interactive investigations using machine learning based on analysis of actions, not data.

Demisto said that it benefits from the Wipro partnership due to:

• SI and IT staff who are familiar with their technology and can integrate it into client environments
• Increased sales opportunities in multiple geographies and industries where they have not previously been working. Currently, the partnership accounts for a significant percentage of overall revenues at Demisto, up from zero two years ago.

Tricentis

Tricentis is a vendor of automated software testing services for DevOps. They target tier one companies, including large financial institutions. Testing is provided for UI and APIs on the web and mobile systems. Tricentis uses a partnership model for testing delivery, and partner organizations generate 50% of its revenues. Wipro has partnered with Tricentis for 14 months and now has several thousand testers trained in the Tricentis toolset. Over the past year, Tricentis’ revenues have doubled due to its partnering strategy. Over the next few years, Tricentis will focus on testing SAP applications in preparation for the 2025 SAP move to HANA.    

Summary

Wipro is using the cloud to help tier one clients with ponderous legacy systems to become more agile and reinvent their business models. The challenge of a cloud environment is increased risk of cyberattack. Avoiding a cloud environment partially mitigates cyber risk, but not enough to overcome the cost and agility disadvantages of a legacy environment. Investments in cybersecurity are made to better manage the cyber risk that comes with cloud delivery and, more importantly, do it in a transparent way that maintains and improves customer confidence in Wipro’s services.   

On top of the cloud and cybersecurity platform, Wipro is investing in digital services to support client revenue growth. Financial institutions cannot focus solely on cost-cutting; they need to drive revenues to build a sustainable business model. Promoting positive customer engagement using digital services is driving client revenue growth. Enabling these capabilities requires emerging technology products which Wipro delivers via product investments and partnerships. The partners I met have experienced rapid revenue and customer growth because Wipro’s clients are demanding automation services, and Wipro is recommending and staffing the delivery of those solutions.

None of Wipro’s big bets are final solutions, but rather approaches with no final form. The final goal is flexibility to adapt to an everchanging environment at a significantly lower cost than previously possible (50-80% lower cost versus the previous 20-35%). While most digital competitors are pursuing the same goals, the sheer scale of partnerships, client engagements, and internally allocated resources demonstrates Wipro’s commitment, and the number of engagements executed to date validates Wipro’s initiatives so far.