Nagarro increases efficiency by integrating worldwide employees, systems, and data with Microsoft Cloud solutions

Facing the challenges of a growing business

Nagarro has gone from about 8000 employees to over 18,000 in the last three years. This also included six mergers and acquisitions, adding about 3,000 employees and more locations, processes, and systems. The 'work-from-anywhere' culture is well-ingrained in the organization. At any time, only 2-3% of the team in India, which is spread across 800 cities, works from offices.

While people, systems, and locations had to be connected seamlessly, the leadership knew that evolving business conditions, rapid growth, and the work-from-anywhere culture would require a robust system to keep employees engaged and connected. An integrated & and intelligent solution was the need of the hour that could interoperate with various business systems and deliver a superior employee experience within the shortest timeframe possible. 

Connecting people, data, and processes with a modern Microsoft solution

Nagarro began its journey envisioning a unifying data layer, which could serve as the ‘single source of truth’ using which it could develop an Digital Workpalce Companion that could offer Self-Serve capabilities and provide proactive & insightful nudges. 

Microsoft Cloud Solutions addressed many of Nagarro's business requirements, proving to be cost-effective, secure, and scalable. These included:

1. Azure Infrastructure – Azure Data Lake
2. Azure Data & AI - Azure Cognitive Services, Azure BOT Services & Azure Applied AI Services, Power BI
3. Microsoft 365 – Microsoft Teams, Power Automate

Using Microsoft Cloud Solutions, Nagarro Achieved MORE (Drive fast-paced innovation) WITH LESS (lower Cost) and derived  manifold business benefits:

1) Driving efficiency via a unified data platform

Nagarro’s implementation of the data layer involved building an API layer to the various application systems to aggregate data and make them referenceable for organization-wide access using common identifiers. This included integrating more than 40 systems, including the HR system, timesheet application, ERP tool, travel application, and contract management tool, among others, to create a comprehensive and consolidated data repository. The API-based integration strategy shortened the time required to integrate between business systems; which otherwise took a lot of time when integrating directly.

2) Empowering employees to do more and with greater efficiency

With the data unification completed, Nagarro developed a Digital Workplace Companion branded ‘Ginger’ to enable its 100% Remote Workforce to be Self-Serviced for typical back-office related queries and deliver pro-active nudges with business insights to boost organizational productivity. 

Ginger enables employee requests for information via different modes, such as questions, notifications, nudges, etc., on processes, systems, and policies. Ginger is connected to an intelligent, evolving knowledge base, and this empowers employees with information at their fingertips, be it a presentation template or the address of an office location. They can also complete administrative tasks, such as filling timesheets, applying for leaves, or sending requests to Active Directory without accessing multiple applications. In addition, employees can self-service with data from diverse systems rather than waiting for information, messaging, or calling for it. In short, Ginger enables employees to complete much more work in less time by removing process inefficiencies and enhancing communication.

3) Getting actionable information at the right time

To achieve its objective of higher employee engagement, Nagarro has used Ginger effectively for behavior analytics, and it can be configured to give notifications and info bytes. Ginger gives nudges based on role, current situation, and performance metrics. For example, it nudges employees to complete tasks on time and alerts managers to take action on project performance. By getting data on employee moods in an aggregated manner, Nagarro can take relevant measures, make changes in project management or modify company policies, etc. Ginger presents contextualized news for employees based on their preferences and profile data. It also gains insights from meeting participation information about employees' interests in topics across regions so that company meetings and leadership sessions can be more effective and engaging.

Manas Human, CEO, Nagarro, says, "Ginger has simplified life for employees. It provides automated reminders and nudges that enable them to accomplish tasks better. It also has a comprehensive knowledge base that supports employees anywhere and anytime. We can extract information from various siloed systems from one platform and gain insights to make faster, more effective individual, project, and organizational decisions."

Future-proofing business via AI and unified data

Ginger has been successful in connecting diverse systems across various business entities. This has helped Nagarro continue business as usual during the pandemic and achieve critical synergies with the organizations acquired. In addition, it has significantly improved productivity, as data is accessible in an integrated and structured manner, and employees can generate reports and get information based on requirements and permissions. Nagarro has also deployed Ginger in Plaksha University under the brand name 'Vani.' As a result, Nagarro has succeeded in attaining its growth objectives.

Nagarro plans to achieve much more with Ginger and has ambitious goals to ensure even more intelligent and seamless connectivity across the organization:

• To engage people better, Nagarro is working on solutions to derive the right information and implement insights gained from it to bring people together and motivate them. For example, by using various data points, the team is working on proximity models to enhance existing strong connections and strengthen weak ones. Nagarro plans to leverage Microsoft products' AI and ML capabilities to drive this further, as it is confident of the efficiency of a Microsoft solution and also shares the company's imperative of responsible and ethical AI. 
• Nagarro's will see its Human Resource management system go live on Microsoft Dynamics 365 in April 2023.
• The recruitment process, too, will be streamlined by bridging the gap between recruitment and onboarding. Nagarro sends about 1,000 offers monthly and plans to automate the entire process between recruitment and onboarding while retaining the human touch.   

 
"Just like you cannot quantify the Mona Lisa, we may not be able to give metrics to underline the success of Ginger. However, the data layer and Ginger have helped us improve employee experience and employee engagement, resulting in better delivery. We look forward to leveraging Microsoft solutions to provide a seamless experience and strong connections to employees and potential recruits so that our productivity remains high and we continue on our path of technology-led innovation", says Ashok Thomas, CIO, Nagarro.