Why Every Company Needs A Tech Expert In Its Board?

“Imagine a farmer, somewhere in Andhra Pradesh, spotting something unusual on the crop. He clicks the image of the crop and asks his phone, ‘hey, what’s the best organic way to deal with it?’ in his/her native language and the mobile reverts back with the solutions in the same local language,” said Sumit Sood, Managing Director, GlobalLogic at a NASSCOM event on ‘digital disruption’.

What if the statement above comes true, it will change the whole production fabric around us. Today, the world is becoming increasingly tech driven and almost all our problems can be addressed by technology in some way or the other but do we have tech masters right at the top to ensure technological solutions?

Today, we don’t need managers who just ask, ‘is the job done?’ from junior employees. There is an urgent need to include ‘tech experts’ in the board of the company who can think of the problem from their own perspective and provide a solution for it leveraging the technology.

Sood in an exclusive interaction with BW Businessworld said, “We need tech masters not just in the boards of a company but also in policy making. You can do wonders with the technology. The question is how you apply it. When the whole concept of Aadhaar was laid out, firstly many of us thought that we already have PAN, we already have voter ID cards, we have passports, and then why do we need another identity card. But before Aadhaar, we did not have any biometric record. So, Nandan Nilekani applied social context and showed that this is what India needs. Aadhaar itself has opened up a lot of portals for policy making.”

The companies are finding it extremely difficult to match steps with the evolving technology. Including a tech expert in the board will help in this regard, increase productivity and will also reduce manpower costs.

“Leveraging the technology to ease day to day problem that we face will make a difference and these problems are around traffic, utility, services and what not. My personal opinion is that’s where the leadership change has to happen. We need to augment the top layer with technologists,” added Sood.

Business operations have changed dramatically over the last few years; today, the world runs on applications. Think of the most successful companies today and you will find that their leaders are tech experts be it Facebook, Amazon or Google.

Tesla can be an excellent example in this regard. The company’s valuation exceeded the valuation of the established brand General Motors this year. There is a reason as to why Tesla can offer life-time warranty on its cars as it has only 18 moving parts whereas the combustion engine of other cars have millions of moving parts. Elon Musk could think of a technological way out which other business leaders couldn’t because he is an engineer and innovator himself.

Thus, the companies can chalk out better methods to reduce cost and maximize returns if they employ a ‘techie’ in their decision-making board and the same goes for government organizations as well. Public welfare solutions can be simplified and executed in a better way with the technology that we have in hand. The only need of the hour is to leverage it to our maximum benefit.