Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research[00:21]
Hi, everyone. My name is Saurabh Gupta. I’m the President for HFS Research, and today we are here to talk about legacy modernization, the cycle that keeps spinning but never quite ends. I talked to so many CIOs who’ve been modernizing for years, and yet nobody ever feels modern. And now AI has shown up and it’s made the thing even more urgent. And to bring that to life, this whole conversation on legacy modernization, the role of AI, I’m joined by two special guests today: Rory, who’s the CIO at Menzies Aviation, and Sorabh Singhal, who spearheads Wipro’s industry, cloud and digital business. So welcome, gentlemen.
Rory Fidler — CIO, Menzies Aviation[01:12]
Thank you, Saurabh, I appreciate it.
Sorabh Singhal — Industry, Cloud & Digital Business, Wipro[01:12]
Thank you, Saurabh. Nice to be invited on the call. I’m looking forward to it.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research[01:12]
So let’s jump in, guys. And Rory, maybe if I can, I can start with you. Everybody’s talking about AI and modernization in the same breath right now. But as a CIO, what does that actually feel like on the ground? What’s the fear, what’s the hype, what’s real?
Rory Fidler — CIO, Menzies Aviation[01:33]
I think, to be honest, without being singularly personal, it’s all quite overpowering. It’s one of those things where you’re thinking, have we got enough AI going on? Are we doing it? Are we doing it at the right speed? Are we doing it in the right place? Is our data safe? And I think it is — fear is a word that I’m using in its right context, because it is so new and it’s coming at us so quickly. What are we thinking about? What’s the question that we don’t know? And that’s why I’m very pleased that we have our muscle and our intellectual capital with Wipro behind us on our modernization program, because Sorabh has to make me look good in making sure that he’s given me all the answers to the landscape, which is incredibly fast.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research[02:51]
Oh, fantastic, Rory. So, if I can ask you: on one hand, there’s this little bit of anxiety around AI and are we going hard enough, fast enough? Are we asking the right questions, as Rory mentioned? But on the other hand, modernization is not a new topic, right? We’ve been at it for years, but we never seem to get to the end of it. On one hand, there’s this anxiety around AI, but on the other hand, there’s this fatigue around modernization as well. Where do you see programs that have succeeded — because you work with so many clients and enterprises — where do you see programs have succeeded on paper, but have actually not moved the needle?
Sorabh Singhal — Industry, Cloud & Digital Business, Wipro[03:38]
That’s an interesting question. I thought you were almost gonna ask something different, but good, good. I think that, let me — it’s basically two sides of the same coin, where the programs have succeeded on paper but have not truly succeeded, versus where the programs have succeeded not just on paper, but have actually succeeded. Both aspects are important, for our viewers, our audience, and ourselves. I feel that where we haven’t succeeded on paper is where we’ve almost rushed into modernization as a bolt-on to something that’s legacy, trying to introduce an aspect of modernization onto a legacy system and never really changing the legacy. It has been run like a one-off project that happens, and I think you also beautifully articulated in the paper we wrote together. So I feel that when you’ve not also looked at it from a business lens and looked at it as an IT initiative — there are so many factors that one can think about. For example, this morning I was talking to a client where we are looking to modernize a very legacy 30, 40 years old system, and we’ve been at it with them for months. And the reason we have been discussing all the subtle nuances of what modernization will feel like when we actually do it — I feel the doing part of it will be a lot smaller than actually planning it, which is really going through all the subtle nuances of what is the tech, what do we want it to be, what business features and workflows will change, how will data happen, how will user experience change, and so forth. So if you look at the reverse of this, anytime that happens, the program is only on paper. And it does happen in organizations. They have their own stress of celebrating success. We spend money in this, so are we seeing success? And there are times when we see that there isn’t adequate effort spent in thinking it through and getting the adequate mind and people to support it, and that’s when it is only on paper. I think on the contrary, Rory will attest to it — they had a system that legacy, and a lot of legacy in their sector. We found that you take a platform-based approach or a services-as-software approach. You take an approach where you looked at all the aspects of modernization, and you do it not one time but continuous. And I think the beautiful thing about it is the effects of it that we see actually taking shape are when business is happy, perception has changed, innovation is happening, you’re more agile, and the cost of support has come down. These are all the initial, some benefits that you can see when modernization is actually happening and not on paper. So sorry for the long answer, but I think it’s important we set the context right in the get-go and articulate this is what I’m seeing and I believe what’s happening.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research[06:34]
It requires business stakeholders and business to be involved, but what’s the role of AI in this? Because everybody has AI ambitions today. You mentioned the paper that we did, but very few are realizing that. What’s breaking down ambitions from impact?
Sorabh Singhal — Industry, Cloud & Digital Business, Wipro[06:57]
I think the role of AI is what you would like it to be. In our context and the clients that we are talking to, we are absolutely seeing how we can do all aspects of modernization with AI, and I’ll give one more example as we move forward in this conversation. But for now, right from understanding the code base that exists, understanding the data that exists, understanding the workflow that exists, AI can play a pivotal role in discovery. AI plays a pivotal role in then forward engineering. And all the way to the build of the modern system, AI is very helpful in bridging that. Obviously, certain guardrails, certain standards and policies have to be enforced to make it enterprise grade. Otherwise you end up doing a beautiful pilot that is not really scaling. And that’s what our focus has been with the platformification of AI capability and how we do modernization, how we do software build, to keep it short.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research[07:43]
Yeah, no, I keep joking about that. AI is going through a death by 1000 POCs and pilots right now, and very few moving into production. But Rory, if you don’t mind bringing this to life — let’s say you strip away all the product names and buzzwords and everything else, what does modernization actually look like at Menzies Aviation? And you’ve often talked about project-led modernization to platform-led modernization. What does that really mean?
Rory Fidler — CIO, Menzies Aviation[08:25]
I think the best way to illustrate this is the building of a house. And we’ve just been through a huge modernization program within Menzies cargo. The first step that we did is that we stripped down everything that we had from a legacy perspective. Throwing technology on a business problem for the sake of the technology very rarely happens successfully — that ignores the change management and the people and all of that good stuff. So first of all, what we did is that we stripped down the processes. We standardized them, we got people from the business heavily involved to make sure that we were being effective and efficient. We then were absolutely razor focused on platforms. We had the core system, which was the import, the export, the transshipment, that anybody in the world who’s involved in cargo understands those principles and those business transactions. The second platform we had was the really hard technical stuff, which changes in every single country: customs. So we had a platform for customs, again, that had the fundamental capabilities, but the local requirements for the market could then be catered for. So that removed a point-to-point capability. So one platform for customs, fully integrated with a cargo management system. And then everybody — which is the soul and the nervous system of everything — a third platform, which was the data. And that became our foundation, which then allowed us to have a look at what we could really do with AI. The AI journey has literally started, that we’re looking at where we take some of those processes end to end, and understand how we can then use AI to be more effective, faster, and impact that transaction process from start to finish. And then I think we’ll see some true value in what we’re trying to do with it. And how do we know it was successful? We hit a point where we moved past the very real risk that we would fail, because we hadn’t re-engineered it properly, to being able to roll it out, scale and speed. And to give you an example of what we managed to do, while we were still building the platform, we were rolling it out at the same time. And we managed to roll the platform out to 47 stations in 25 months, I think it was — give or take, where you’re counting it from. And now we can take the step with AI, and we can use our specialists who are supporting us to say, what are the right end-to-end processes that add that value where the AI is really delivering business value at the end of it, rather than, can I write ChatGPT to find out the highest tonnages in our top 5 airports, which I can get from multiple places. So: redo your foundations, look at your processes, materialize your legacy into platforms that are robust and standardized as much as possible — the infamous Starbucks model. You walk into any of our airports, you’re using the same platform, and then the cream on your cake becomes your artificial intelligence, and however powerful that’s gonna become, it’s the roof on the house.
Sorabh Singhal — Industry, Cloud & Digital Business, Wipro[12:18]
Just because we are having this conversation, Rory has said some really pertinent and beautiful things about how they’ve succeeded and what were the fundamentals of this transformation, modernization. There are other things in a relationship when you are a provider and there’s an organization, a client and a partner like Rory with whom you’re working. The things that make these things also — which are unstated things — is they never outsourced their transformation or modernization. They partnered for it. What that means is a lot actually, because they never let go of where the business needs to go. They never let go of partnering day to day on what this needs to look like and feel like when it is implemented. So they drove it as much as we had to bring in the technology or now the AI and the other aspects of it together, because that is the meaningful partnership and what makes it successful. And I have often found transformation, modernization as something that just is on paper when it is fully outsourced. Then you can’t outsource the business outcomes that your business has to achieve as a client, and if you partner the way Rory and us did, I think that’s a great recipe for success, and I think that’s something that’s really important to mention as well.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research[13:33]
Yeah, I know, guys, I think that’s fantastic, and I think both of you are saying the same thing. If I take what Rory just described, essentially exemplifying what you said, it’s not transformation for the sake of IT, transformation for the sake of business. And then Rory, what you described — it’s not just about IT, you mentioned process, you mentioned data, you mentioned building it like a house, which involves everything. And I think that’s one of the common mistakes that I’ve seen: it’s just another IT project without actually fundamentally changing the process, the data, and those are the kind of enterprise debts that fundamentally don’t get you to be successful. But if I can ask you — you’ve heard what Rory described, and you’ve been a part of that journey, and you’ve seen so many other modernization stories. What’s the art of the possible here? What do you think people can achieve, clients can achieve, if they really go through it in the holistic way that Rory just outlined as Menzies’ transformation story?
Sorabh Singhal — Industry, Cloud & Digital Business, Wipro[14:51]
I think two aspects, and Rory, please chime in on this answer as well, because you can give a real business context from a business perspective of your own business. But two things I will highlight: art of the possible, one is on the continuous modernization side. So another example from a large European client, a financial services client, where we have set up a shop, a people, human shop, where we were doing all sorts of modernization on all sorts of systems and applications on an ongoing basis, like a centralized function. And we realized with the AI we were actually waiting on them to tell us what to modernize, and that’s not very efficient. When you’re trying to look at an organization and look at wholesale what possibly should be modernized, what should be prioritized over something else, it could all be done if you have the right context fabric of an organization, the right technology roadmap of an organization. You could almost model it to inform you what should you be working on, what should you be modernizing. So in this context, we are pivoting that entire human shop into an AI-based capability as a platform. And what that platform does is it ingests all the data fabric, all the context fabric, the knowledge graphs, all the business systems, all the application knowledge, and it’s starting to now make recommendations on where are the potential loopholes in the organization when it comes to tech debt, when it comes to technology debt, when it comes to the technology that is unsupported, and so on and so forth. And with that, what we are able to make a recommendation is: here is, if you want to do this, this is the effort it will cost you, this is the ROI it’ll cost you, these are the agents that are available to do it, this is a time frame in which it can be executed. At the click of a button, they can actually decide, OK. So what that does, to cut the long story short, it helps you make modernization a continuous effort or a continuous activity rather than a one-time event. Now, it doesn’t really necessarily apply to if you have to really sunset a large system or a platform — then you obviously have to take it differently — but it does give you indications on what’s happening and then be able to act swiftly and make it a routine process. So that’s the platformification of how we are looking at modernization in the future, that it is not a one-time event but a continuous event. Like if you go by the analogy of George Washington’s axe or his grandfather’s axe, you know what happened to the axe — the axe wasn’t the same axe over time, right? So it’s not the same system over time. If I take that example and extend it to the business side, what’s happening, what’s the art of the possible is that you can do things — and I’d really like Rory to tell that — there are functionalities you can add now that will be revenue generating for you, which weren’t previously revenue generating. There are functionalities you can now think about that you would not have ever done, and you can not just deliver them faster, but you can also see how this has become an engine for business growth rather than something that is just a modern tech enabling and supporting business. Now, I think that’s the art of the possible. That how can you add businesses and look for those venues that were not available to you earlier if the modernization was thought about as Rory and Menzies Aviation have thought about it. So I’ll let Rory shed some light on it, but I think this is what’s the art of the possible in my opinion.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research[18:18]
Rory, do you agree? What’s the art of the possible for you?
Rory Fidler — CIO, Menzies Aviation[18:22]
I think the art of the possible for me is execution. It’s OK being theoretical, but it doesn’t make us more effective within our industry. So for that modernization piece, very early we decided what successful was gonna look like, so we weren’t doing this forevermore. They’re hard, these big programs, enterprise level, long hours, the people work incredibly hard. So where is successful? And it’s not at the end point, but at what point have you got to success? Success is that the infrastructure is finished, is built. The success is that the data is all in one place. But when have you finished? Whenever you’ve finished, and it may be multiple phases, it may be multiple streams — I think at one point we had 11 separate streams. And then it sounds so theoretical, but it’s all about the people, it’s all about the change management. Do they really believe? Everybody comes to work and in principle they work hard. That’s Homo sapiens. So is it making their life easier, and have you addressed the fear that they have of changing their system, of what they used to be doing it? And if you can make that successful, the modernization piece has happened. To then bring the thing that at the beginning of this conversation I was scared of, and I still remain scared of because I don’t fully understand it, is AI. And the thing about AI where the real value is, is what I call within our team our thread of gold. So the example I will use is an end-to-end contract situation. At the moment, purchasing may have something to do with it, sales may have something to do with it, but if you take the thread of gold to have a smart contract, the systems will allow you to understand when they expire. People within that will understand what the pricing is, so it’s consistent, which will then create the invoicing, so that the customer knows that they’re paying the right service for the right price, and then the sales people will know what the enterprise level value of that customer is. Artificial intelligence is the nervous system that can pull all of those small hotspots of data that live across multiple parts of the platform together to allow you to have a commercial relationship model. And the last piece of that thread of gold is, are you hitting your service levels? So you have a contract to deliver a service and your customer will pay a certain amount. And if you can use the artificial intelligence to track that, you can react to recover. And that is what I will be tasking Wipro and Sorabh to do, as one of our first major end-to-end test cases in the AI sphere, building it on top of our platforms that we now have running over 48 airports.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research[21:53]
Fantastic. So we know what our next conversation is gonna be about.
Rory Fidler — CIO, Menzies Aviation[21:59]
Well, if it’s successful, I’ll still be around to have the conversation, and hopefully it will be with Sorabh on the call as well.
Sorabh Singhal — Industry, Cloud & Digital Business, Wipro[21:59]
I can only say likewise.
Rory Fidler — CIO, Menzies Aviation[22:11]
Fantastic, but I think that’s where it fits. It’s the end to end rather than the depth. The depth has to be your platform to give you solidity, consistency, standardization, which helps your training and your change management, and getting to all of the niches and crannies of where everything runs on the data eventually, and get the artificial intelligence to either fill the gaps in, check that things are correct, and that you’re being accurate and effective. At scale and at speed — that’s the other thing that is the automatic assumption at the moment, which again causes further fear because it’s a threat of losing jobs, but hopefully your workforce are then doing more productive things than ticking off invoices to see if they match the rates that are in the contract which was signed 5 years ago.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research[22:47]
I 100% agree. Look, this has been a fascinating conversation, but before I let you both go, I wanted to — there are a lot of CIOs and IT leaders who are listening into this, and all of them are facing legacy pressures, Rory, that you’re facing and that your clients are facing on one side. And then there’s also the pressure and the fear of using AI on the other hand, and what do we do with this? How do we leverage it? So Rory, if I can ask you, what are the two things that CIOs need to start doing today? And what’s the one thing that they should stop doing today? What would you advise?
Rory Fidler — CIO, Menzies Aviation[23:55]
So the two things to start is, to have the guardrails in place. So that you know that the data and the pitch that you’re playing the game on — your data, which is your intellectual capital and your knowledge — is safe. And whatever AI is running on that, you have the right bots and agents running on data that’s, you know, friendly fire. The second thing I would do is everybody in the organization, upskill them, give them the opportunity, even if it’s just the very lowest level of everybody in the organization understanding how to use ChatGPT for writing emails, because just that very fundamental thing dissipates the fear and gives them the confidence to search and get better. And if you move the base quality of your workforce up by 1% by using technology, it will be an exponential increase of allowing that to catch fire. And then I think the thing to stop doing is doing nothing. Stop doing nothing. Stop reading about it, stop thinking about it. Just get a small group together who are of interest, and just one agent, one workflow, get the insurance policy, get the safety, get the data set in place, and light the firecracker and watch it go off, and see if it has done it more effectively, quicker, more accurately. And then if it hasn’t, if you’ve guardrailed it and isolated it, then, what do they say? Let the birds fly free, and if it likes what it’s doing, it’ll come back. Increase the workforce and the fear, let them touch it, feel it, look at it. Make sure the environments and the data are protected, and the machine isn’t going to go and pull over all of your competitors’ information. And I don’t think it’s a real sentence, but: stop doing nothing. And then, every journey has a first step, doesn’t it?
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research[26:37]
Yeah, do something, do something. All right, Sorabh. Two things to do, one thing not to do.
Sorabh Singhal — Industry, Cloud & Digital Business, Wipro[26:44]
I think Rory has covered a lot of ground in terms of what they should be doing. A lot in common there, but one of the things I definitely would say is about the talent too. I think talent across the board — not just their partner talent, their own talent — and identifying, this is on the concept of AI, because this talk is about also modernization. So definitely I’ll talk about that in common with Rory, that enabling the talent and making them, in whatsoever form, giving them access to the technology and enabling them to use it in whatever form, way or shape, which is what we are also doing at Wipro, training hundreds and thousands of people on a daily basis to the latest and greatest tech that applies to their client environment. So that’s one thing that everybody must absolutely do. I think the other thing is, don’t wait on the modernization. This is the opportunity. And ask for the impossible is my second advice, that you can actually expect things you would have like — establish some lofty missions on what to modernize and how to modernize. Don’t be afraid, because at best, the technology is there that you can see early proof very fast, and you can fail fast truly. So don’t wait on modernization to happen when something else will occur. I used to hear that I want this modernization done in my lifetime. You can actually now do it in your tenure — forget about lifetimes, right, when you’re in that role. So I think it’s very possible, like I already said, 25 months and 48 stations, whatnot. So I think that’s the second thing: don’t wait on your modernization for some event to occur or a project to be shaped for modernization to occur. I think the opportunity is very ripe for you to do that now. And I think, think about stop doing — look, the technology today gives you an opportunity to get very productive and efficient. But it is more than that. Like what Rory touched upon in his modernization narrative, this is a time to really pivot and reset what you can do with it. So there’s an aspect of what you can achieve on the business side, what you can do more with the technology. So stop looking at it just as one access lever to reduce cost and be productive. I think there is a lot more that one can achieve with it besides being just a cost lever. So I think that’s one thing I would say: stop looking at it just from that one single lens. And move beyond the POCs, right? Truly scaled and prepared organization. Because for anything new like this, there’s a lot of performance art and theatrics that goes on first before it becomes mainstream. So that’s what I would say.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research[29:46]
Yeah, no, that’s fantastic. Guys, thank you so much for taking out some of your time. I learned so much through this conversation. I think my biggest takeaway was legacy modernization is not just an IT initiative. It’s a business — it has to drive business transformation. And you need to look at it from a people, process, data, culture perspective. And Rory, you mentioned do something, and Sorabh, you said have lofty goals. So the technology is there. I think now what we need is some bold leaders like Rory to get executing on it. And I’ll tell you my story: when I started my career as a software engineer doing mainframe programming, I met my first ever boss, Rory and Sorabh, in New York two weeks back, and he said, your code is still there. And I’m gonna tell him now that, look, do something and set a lofty goal, and we can make things better and remove Sorabh from that mainframe code. But thank you so much for taking out the time. This was a fantastic conversation. And now we also know what’s the topic of our next conversation. So it sets it up perfectly.
Sorabh Singhal — Industry, Cloud & Digital Business, Wipro[31:16]
Rory, thank you. Saurabh, thank you so much for this opportunity. Appreciate it and really enjoyed the talk.
Rory Fidler — CIO, Menzies Aviation[31:22]
Likewise, thank you for your time and very interesting.
Saurabh Gupta — President, HFS Research[31:26]
Thank you.
