Tata Tele Business Services accelerating SMEs towards Industry 4.0

Businesses have strongly acknowledged the profound changes and impact of Industry 4.0, which has allowed SMEs to advance and explore more in terms of digital-based solutions to strengthen, secure, and streamline their working structure and pattern. With millions of risks looming over several domains and causing them to suffer serious implications, Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) has used its in-depth knowledge of its clients and creative solutions to transform challenges into opportunities for a range of enterprises, greatly enhancing their competitiveness. SmartStateIndia had the opportunity to interact with Mr. Aditya Kinra, Vice-President, Tata Tele Business Services, who talked about how TTBS is helping the SME segment with enterprise grade solutions such as Cloud-suite solutions, Collaboration solutions, IoT and Cybersecurity solutions, to become more digitally agile, resilient and secured for today’s competitive environment.

Here is an excerpt from the interaction.

The SMEs were the most adversely impacted section due pandemic as they lagged behind in the digital transformation of their businesses, how has TTBS helped these businesses to accelerate their digital transformation journey for business continuity and resiliency?

Business communication went into the full-digital mode, owing to the pandemic. The situation necessitated innovation in communication and collaboration solutions that are scalable, robust, secure, and reliable and serve as a proxy for real-life interactions. Small and Medium businesses have realised that they will have to modernise their operations to become digitally agile, become resilient and enhance their customer experiences to drive business growth.

Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) as one of India’s leading and trusted digital enablers for SMEs ensured that our customers had uninterrupted services and provided them with innovative smart solutions. Our connectivity, cloud, collaboration, security and SaaS Solutions backed by our highly acclaimed managed services and support helped them to simplify their digital transformational journey and maintain business continuity.

What are the solutions that TTBS is offering to SMEs to strengthen their digital capabilities, and what are the TTBS USPs and benefits over other solution providers?

TTBS is an end-to-end enterprise tech provider that offers solutions across the value chain from connectivity to cloud collaboration, secured network, voice and managed services. We are a one-stop digital enabler providing most comprehensive portfolio of enterprise grade solutions that can be easily integrated with existing infra, provide greater value and higher cost-effectiveness to enterprises operating in India.

We are continually expanding our product portfolio to provide innovative smart tech and cloud solutions like as Smartflo – an advanced cloud communication suite which is now integrated with WhatsApp Business Platform to offer an enhanced business communication experience, SmartOffice– a one-box start-up kit with voice, data, apps, storage, Ultra-Lola- a technologically superior point-to-point offering, with micro-second latency for BFSI companies, Smart Internet Leased Line – bundled with cloud security, SD-WAN iFLX an intelligently flexible solution (built on Fortinet’s platform) for network optimization, and a comprehensive suite of cyber security solutions across industries.

Besides extensive product portfolio, we have most robust and one of the largest channel networks which is available at hand to meet the requirements of our customers in over 60 cities across the country. We have the right mix of partners who address various industrial segments. We have pure telecom partners, system integrators, data security experts, software selling partners and even non-ICT partners who have better reach across industry segments.

Also, to enhance pre-buying experience for customers, we have introduced ‘Customer Experience Platform (CEP)’. This is an industry’s first initiative that enables the channel partners and TTBS team to easily communicate about specific product related details to our prospect customers. Customers are provided secured log-in credentials to experience the product virtually and feel how it can be beneficial to their business with product demo videos and related industry specific case-studies. This is a user -friendly, collaborative solution built for ‘faster, simpler, and closer’ approach for TTBS customers and partners.

What are the trends you are observing that are shaping the communications solutions for SMEs, as well as, for enterprises in India?

Businesses are constantly recalibrating operating models and working environments that are engaging in different activities via multiple devices. Connectivity with the ecosystem is assumed to be “ON” 24/7 x 365 where there is an emerging need for solutions that are flexible, secure and scalable. Cloud has emerged as the backbone for all transformative technologies that SMEs require to grow their markets. Cloud solutions are equipped with end-to-end security and can be easily integrated with existing applications to reduce extra spending on additional infrastructure. Owing to their innumerable benefits, they are getting wider acceptance across industry segments.  

Cloud enables companies to make operations smoother, build scalable businesses on ‘pay as you go’ model and find the right enabling technology to address their business needs. Digital workplaces are emerging as the preferred choice for hybrid workforce. Through their cloud platforms employees across geographies can access necessary information instantly and securely from a central resource. Smart video meetings, instant messaging, large file sharing help in effective and timely communication to help companies streamline business functions.

To enhance customer experience, SMEs are adopting an omni-channel approach backed by new age technologies like AI, Data Analytics, Machine Learning. These enable in binding all customer-facing interfaces together integrated at the backend and helps in creating a better experience for customers across platforms be it web apps, mobile apps, intelligent chatbots, wearables etc.

How is Smartflo helping businesses in their cloud-based communications requirement? And what type of interesting use cases you have seen where Smartflo has transformed the business of an organization?

Smartflo is an ultra-flexible and anywhere, anytime cloud communication suite that gives freedom to employees to communicate and work from anywhere across platforms of voice and data. Smartflo comes with myriad benefits that add to efficiency and productivity and enable businesses deliver better customer experience across channels. It doesn’t require a large setup or storage infrastructure, thus there is no maintenance cost at all. This very advantage of Smartflo makes it a viable cloud communication option. Smartflo is being used by many organizations across industries such as BFSI, IT/ITES, Manufacturing, Education, Fintech, Logistics, e-Commerce, and even traditional and conventional enterprises to improve the customer engagements.

Additionally, Smartflo helps companies when it comes to business intelligence services. It provides reports and analytics that facilitate monitoring the progress of a project and tracking agents. It can draw insights from call notes, live calls, voice-to-text messages, and keyboard mapping. This very facility helps management in making the right business decisions that ultimately result in consumer satisfaction.

Most importantly, it offers advanced security features and guarantees business continuity with 99.5% uptime supported by 24/7 managed services. These solutions are quite encouraging for Start-ups as well.

To share an example, we deployed Smartflo solution for one of the largest coaching institutes across all their branches in the country. The ask was to handle diverse telephonic queries from students and invest in outbound campaigns to generate more business. Through Smartflo we had set-up a virtual contact centre that enabled automatic call distribution and skill- based routing for their marketing, admission and counselling teams and also student support teams An IVR tree was established for their counsellors and employees, a facility of recording and monitoring calls backed by robust report analytics was done. Smartflo solution also ensured payment reminder calls to students and 24*7 counsellor availability; intelligently routing calls to counsellors on their mobile’s as per their shift calendar. With Smartflo’s comprehensive and intuitive features, the entire process was made more efficient and manageable and also enabled extensive lead generation.

What is your opinion about Cybersecurity awareness amongst the enterprises and SME segments in India? How is TTBS helping customers become more aware, and to adopt solutions for a more robust cybersecurity strategy for their organizations?

Today, dealing with malicious practices and cyber-attacks has become a cumbersome task for enterprises, but it is necessary to safeguard the business data. Organisations are continuously looking for measures and tech solutions to strengthen their security and prevent such attacks. SMEs are more vulnerable to cyber-attacks like phishing, ransomware as they do not have extensive IT resources and depend on external partners to take care of their security needs.

In such a scenario, Smart Internet by TTBS has emerged as a ray of great hope for SMEs. Smart Internet offers a complete solution of dedicated bandwidth, security, and manageability. This high-performance network allows businesses to access bandwidth-heavy applications easily with real-time usage control and manageability that significantly improves productivity. Offered as a bundled package of basic firewall and DNS options, Smart Internet with its strong fibre connectivity ensures maximum uptime backed with 99.5% SLA. It gives clear network visibility in terms of usage, peak load, and downtime. This feature allows organisations to proactively monitor their network and system.

What are the new offerings and upcoming solutions planned by Tata Tele Business Services for growth and market expansion in India?

Today, digitalisation has emerged as one of the most effective ways for organisations to transform the entire functioning, enhance consumers’ experience, and multiply revenue and profit generation. Recognising the efficacy of digitalisation, the focus of SMEs has shifted to utilising the full potential of the revolutionary digital technologies. With this approach, they will be able to expand their business reach, serve consumers across the globe, create a flexible work environment, and strengthen their bond with consumers and more.

To facilitate SMEs efforts to adapt to the evolving digital ecosystem, TTBS with its vast enterprise expertise and research offers cutting-edge innovative digital solutions that are economical and help enterprises become future-ready. Our strong understanding of businesses is evident in the smart solutions that we provide to accelerate digital inclusion. Further to this, we also introduced strategic partnerships with Zoom, Google Workspaces, Microsoft Azure and WhatsApp Business Platforms to offer integrated capabilities to enterprises to stay hyperconnected and foster a collaborative culture for hybrid digital workplaces. These are companies with respective specialised expertise in the communication and collaboration space where TTBS customers can leverage their world-class offerings.

As a progressive digital enabler, our strategic focus has always been to partner our customers as subject matter experts and accelerate their digital transformation journey. We will keep helping SMEs with their technology needs and expand our service offerings, particularly in the SaaS, IaaS, and Cloud domains.

Our customer centric approach has awarded us with industry recognitions such as CII Customer Obsession Awards for Active Customer Engagement, Asia Pacific Stevie Award 2022-Silver for innovative use of technology in customer service, this year.