AWS Travel and Hospitality Partner Conversations: Mphasis

Nitin Rakesh, CEO and Executive Director of Mphasis joins Sekhar Mallipeddi, Worldwide Technical Leader for AWS Travel and Hospitality, for a broad-ranging discussion around how AWS Partners are helping customers build resilience and prepare for what’s next in travel and hospitality.

During this unprecedented time for the industry, we have been inspired by the innovations that have been born out of disruption and will impact and improve the way we fly, eat, stay, and experience our world for years to come. Now more than ever, AWS wants to help customers succeed by connecting them to AWS Partners with deep AWS technical expertise and proven customer success to help travel and hospitality organizations build a resilient business and accelerate innovation. That’s why we’re honored to have Mphasis as a launch member of the brand-new AWS Travel and Hospitality Partner Competency.

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Sekhar Mallipeddi: Describe your company, the types of travel and hospitality work you do, and key travel and hospitality clients.

Nitin Rakesh: Mphasis is an information technology solutions provider specializing in cloud and cognitive services. Mphasis applies next-generation technology to help enterprises transform businesses globally. Customer centricity is foundational to Mphasis and is reflected in the Mphasis’ Front2Back™ Transformation approach. Mphasis’ Service Transformation approach helps “shrink the core” through the application of digital technologies across legacy environments within an enterprise, enabling businesses to stay ahead in a changing world.

Digital native consumers and workforces, a changing marketplace, and advancements in technology are driving transformation in core IT for the airline industry. The sector is looking for ways to enhance the stakeholder experience for optimizing operations. Mphasis combines its deep airline domain expertise with technology leadership and unique digital transformation capabilities across the industry.

Along with our strong talent pool with technology and domain expertise, we focus on next-gen airlines’ products and platforms that ensure effective application management. Leveraging deep domain expertise and experience, Mphasis has enabled clients to unlock opportunities across the value chain using Front2Back™ and Service Transformation methodologies. Our cutting-edge solutions have helped us to stay ahead of the curve. Our strong presence in airline quality assurance that consists of reusable automated test repositories covering major business functions has helped clients optimize their operations. Our unique cloud-hosted domain training platform (DSKOOL) for internal employees has enabled us to enhance domain and industry knowledge, ensuring better productivity across various functions.

SM: Many companies across travel and hospitality have been managing through a period of unprecedented disruption. What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced during this recent period and how have you helped clients manage through them?

NR: The pandemic has spurred enterprises to reshape many aspects of their businesses. While the immediate-term focus was on resilience, enterprises have now begun to move on from being in crisis management mode to accelerating the transformation to stay in lockstep with the consumers as well as to adjust to the new reality. Enterprises are moving from trying to be “omni-channel” to adopting a “Digital-First” and, in many cases, a “Digital-Only” business model.

Retooling the supply chain and engagement model to support this pivot has become an urgent priority. At Mphasis, we believe that being nimble, responsive, and customer centric is our key priority, and we are accelerating and helping clients scale up their transformation program. With customer centricity as the pivot, we introduced Mphasis Front2Back (or F2B as we call it) over three years ago. While customer centricity may sound like every company’s purpose, our F2B solutions enable clients to achieve scalable, digital future-ready operations faster. Our solutions combine multiple transformation levers to deliver quick returns on investments while lowering the overall total cost of ownership.

Assisting our clients to sail through these unprecedented times has been our priority. To help them restructure their businesses, we developed a modern digital footprint to enhance operational efficiency and kick start a seamless digital transition across the board. We are enabling them in this modernization journey to bring in efficiency and improve employee and customer experiences and using our global service model to mitigate enterprise risks and improve resilience to adapt to a possible change in business and consumer dynamics. Furthermore, specifically in the travel and hospitality sector, we have been helping clients in their transformation journey and ensuring operational efficiency with solutions focusing on automation, MIPS reduction. We also have been developing platforms for airlines and airports that can bring in optimization, improve efficiency, and improve customer experiences. We also have been enabling contactless and other digital solutions that can build backend user trust and confidence on the travel front.

SM: It’s been an incredibly difficult time for travel and hospitality companies, but we’ve seen many companies investing for the long run. With all the uncertainty, why has your company chosen to invest in travel and hospitality at this time?

DB: The travel and hospitality industry caters to a very important perspective of human connection and engagement. People cannot operate remotely forever. The excitement around the launch of several COVID-19 vaccines and various safety guidelines that have been institutionalized by the travel and hospitality industry aims at bringing back the trust amongst travelers. The sector is expected to recover soon.

The travel and hospitality industry is changing its business strategy to operate in a low-scale mode but with increased agility. The business models that are built around trust and elasticity are expected to recover quickly. We are committed to investing in developing solutions and frameworks that will help the industry in this journey of recovery. Our solutions are centered around pointed industry solutions like Travel Data Platform that enables clients to derive actionable insights from data. The platform is modular and based on open standard and extensible architecture patterns delivering up to 80% of the requirements out of the box while eliminating 10s of millions of dollars of cost. There are numerous opportunities around digital transformation and affordable innovation enabling contactless travel, remote work environment, and hyper-personalized offers to enhance traveler experiences, thereby improving overall operational efficiency.

SM: In the face of the current disruption to the travel and hospitality industry, we’ve observed incredible innovations coming from across the industry. How has your company innovated through these challenging times on behalf of your customers and what are you most proud of?

NR: With the changing times and evolving needs of the sector, our go-to-market has been empowered by two pillars of Mphasis strategy driving consumption-based IT solutions; Front2Back™ Transformation that caters to the fast-changing market and the need for personalization. The solution enables enterprises to directly address the pressing need to become agile, innovative, and hyperpersonalized in their response to digital disruption. The Front2Back™ Transformation leverages state-of-the-art reference frameworks and capabilities of agile transformation for quick results. Enterprises are thus able to leverage the cloud to develop and migrate apps to save on costs, improve speed, and drive market leadership by being able to offer innovative and intelligent experiences. Secondly, our Service Transformation solutions offer an integrated approach to enable enterprises to achieve scalable, digital, future-ready operations.

“Data” as an asset is still in the early adoption phase, which makes it a competitive differentiator for leading organizations as they focus on digital transformation. I am particularly enthusiastic about our cloud native Travel Data Platform solution that addresses the new business reality in terms of handling exponential data, hyperpersonalization, and real-time decision making in an elastic and cost-optimized business model for clients. Moreover, we provide services and deliver excellence with best-in-class, web-based cloud solutions such as PATRAM (an electronic airway bill IP) designed toward the IATA-mandated program for airline cargo. PATRAM is developed to provide simple, flexible, and cost-effective solution resulting in improved customer service, higher accuracy, and enhanced information quality for the freight forwarders to submit air waybills(s). Leveraging deep domain expertise and experience, we partner with airlines to unlock opportunities across the value chain using our Front2Back™ and Service Transformation methodologies.

SM: The travel and hospitality industry is incredibly resilient. As you look toward recovery, what role does technology play for your company moving forward? How do you see technology enhancing the customer experience and improving operational efficiency?

NR: Modern technology adoption curve has been accelerated due to the recent disruptions in travel industry.

Biometrics, IoT, big data, beacons, and machine learning have all helped our clients improve operational efficiency, especially when the operational dynamics have been severely impacted. Mphasis always stands as a leading applied technology services company with our core strategy of bring the “T” back into IT. Mphasis “Applies the Next” to provide hyper-personalized experiences for the end consumer. For enterprises today, the path to stay ahead of the curve is to adopt and adapt to the evolving technology landscape. A continuous growth calls in for a paradigm shift in operational efficiency, customer service, agility, and productivity that only modern technology can offer.

At Mphasis, we aim at continuously delivering a holistic experience to our customer, by combining Enterprise Automation (intelligent Business Process Management, Robotic Process Automation, and Optical Character Recognition), artificial intelligence, digital, and next-gen data with process re-structuring and outcome-based service delivery to ensure maximum ROI for our clients. We aim to offer enterprises vast and versatile technology with domain expertise, both in-house and through our strategic partnerships.

SM: How does building on AWS allow you to prepare for whatever the “new normal” in travel and hospitality will look like? How does the new AWS Travel and Hospitality Partner Competency help companies do the same?

NR: The “new normal” that has resulted from this pandemic has motivated us to think differently and not work with yesterday’s logic. AWS has helped us to identify the key industry challenges, leverage existing AWS reference architectures, and build solutions that are open standard using AWS native services and extensible serverless design. For clients, these industry solutions help relieve and eventually replace the on-premises loads leading to cost saving and an agile environment.

We provide an end-to-end cloud and cognitive portfolio of services leveraging our partnership with AWS. Through our skills and expertise in AWS services along with our patented and award-winning cognitive IP, we enable enterprises to derive insights from their data and create cutting edge solutions to increase the pace of business in an ever changing and evolving landscape. We combine our deep airlines domain expertise with technology leadership and unique digital transformation experience across various industries to engage across the spectrum of services ranging from core applications and infrastructure support to development of next-gen airlines’ products and platforms. We are also working at building data platform solutions for airports and OTAs in collaboration with the AWS Travel team.

Being a Premier Consulting Partner of the AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency with our deep expertise, diverse service portfolio, and award-winning patented cognitive IP, we aim to transform the travel and hospitality industry to adapt with the emerging needs of the clients.

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Nitin Rakesh, a distinguished leader in the IT services industry, joined Mphasis as its Chief Executive Officer and Director in January 2017.

In the first year of taking on the mantle as the CEO of Mphasis, Nitin introduced Mphasis’ C= X2C2 =1^TM formula for success, (hyperpersonalization; drive n=1 powered by Cloud & Cognitive); driving multi-dimensions of business value with an integrated consumer-centric Front2Back^TM Digital Transformation, enabling Business Operations, Technology Transformation and Service Transformation, driven by IP assets.

Under Nitin’s leadership, Mphasis set a record of highest deal wins in the history of the company, thus re-defining benchmarks and growing above industry rate. Mphasis’ stock price observed an increase of 2.5x, in two years and revenue from digital projects increased substantially. His laser focus on quadra dimensional growth – consistent, profitable, competitive and responsible, led to enhanced shareholder value. His motto to accelerate value creation for customers, shareholders and employees builds a growth-focused culture within the company.

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Learn more and team up with AWS Travel and Hospitality Competency Partners.

See more Partner Conversations and industry insights on the AWS Travel and Hospitality Blog.