“Understanding the business is key to identifying which technology will solve specific problems. Business priorities should come first, followed by technology.”
With a career spanning over 21 years, Harnath Babu, as the CIO of KPMG India, drives innovative product development, disruptive technologies, and R&D efforts. In a conversation with CIO&Leader, Harnath Babu emphasizes the importance of aligning technology investments with business priorities, understanding the evolving threat landscape, and leveraging AI to drive significant business transformation. Excerpts are below:
CIO, KPMG India
CIO&Leader: What are the significant milestones in your IT career and the major challenges you have faced along the way?
Harnath Babu: I’ve been working as a CIO for almost 16 years now. When I took the role as a CIO, the first challenge was aligning user expectations with the domain; at that time, I was in the insurance business. The key to navigating the business was staying committed and speaking the business language. Staying up to date with technology is also crucial.
Understanding the business helps identify which technology will solve specific business problems. So, see business first, then technology. Another crucial aspect is ensuring that any technology investment adds value and makes sense for the business. As you progress in your career and take on larger responsibilities as a CIO, security becomes a top priority due to the increasing number of threats and the expanding threat surface. Adopting a secure-by-design approach is vital. These challenges are typical for any CIO, and being prepared and forward-thinking is essential.
CIO&Leader: What are your strategies for prioritizing technology investments?
Harnath Babu: It’s important to invest in those areas. There’s so much available that you can be distracted, but the moot point or the bottom line point is you have to invest where the business clarity is, and you have to invest in areas where you think it can have an impact in terms of the future of the business, right. Most importantly, you have to invest in areas where it can potentially impact the business if it is not done in the right way, such as security and resilience.
CIO&Leader: Which technology has captivated your interest the most, and why?
Harnath Babu: AI will continue to evolve, and we’ve seen that big change, and based on what this technology has really brought up, it’s commendable primarily because of the amount of investment that’s going in the capability that is available to run or at least build such technologies and also the value that this technology can create for business. The other technologies were there, they created smaller impacts to start with and slowly it kind of grew.
But AI is really disrupting the way businesses work today to people experience technology. We are seeing very strong technology. I will obviously equate this with electricity or the proliferation of the way the internet came in. AI is the next big wave in terms of tech.
CIO&Leader: What are your thoughts on the advancements in AI led by India?
Harnath Babu: The innovation that is happening globally on the fundamental or the foundation technology will continue to happen. We will continue to leverage though. I am not really saying that we are trying to create something new, we are not trying to create a new GPT or equivalent of a GPT but we are trying to leverage some of those technologies and see what is that we can get a practical use case of that.