Dr. Sayed Peerzade, Group CIO, Reliance Entertainment, underlines the focus on data-driven decision-making across the organization and how a combination of new and existing technologies is driving personalized experience for the customers.
What is your agenda for growth in 2021 and plan to fast-forward your growth?
Reliance entertainment is a digitally matured organization. We had our cloud transformation earlier and see ourselves comfortable with any new technology.
Our primary business is films but we have given equal priority to digital business. We have completed our film production and are more focused on digital, be it content creation or improving our customer experience. Data-driven decision making across the organisation is our priority. We are working on further enhancing personalised experience for the users; AR-based products is another area.
How has the year 2020 increased focus on technology across your industry?
The pandemic has affected not only the media industry but all other businesses across the industries. At present, the cinemas are affected; however, consumers have the digital capability to book tickets and pre-order things online, just the physical experience in the theatres is missing.
While digital platforms were playing a major role pre-Covid, the pandemic changed the human behaviour drastically. The consumption patterns have changed to digital in a big way which has resulted in manifold increase in the digital content consumption.
What are the scenarios that are likely to impact your industry in 2021?
The impact has already taken place and is quite visible. It’s not only for media it is visible across industries. Those who adopted digital as a business goal across organizations survived the onslaught and more or less things are getting back into the normal state for them. Moving ahead, higher focus will be put on digital business and experience. Film exhibition is an important part of film business in India; it will be back in its previous glory very soon.
What are your technology and digital transformation priorities for 2021?
Platform-based development and approach is the priority for us. We are more focused on analytics, AI/ML, automation, and digital collaborations. We have already adopted SMAC stack, and are bringing blockchain, robotics, automations, IoT, digital fabrications, and AR together. The technology focus will be to drive the business improvement by socializing the entertainment content, bringing more footfall, and increasing engagement across theatres, OTT and gaming through data-driven decision making.
What are the key technologies which you would focus upon in 2021 and beyond?
The focus is towards reaping benefits from technologies like blockchain and robotics. In addition, the focus will be on information security and efficient collaboration in the new normal because the current situation may extend till the end of this year as well. My focus is on the both ends by improving existing technologies and bringing in new technologies that will make the business agile.
