SANJIB SAHOO XVANTAGE
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to their end customers, all seamlessly through a platform. We also wanted to solve key challenges such as how do we price real-time, how do we provide a personalised experience for every single persona, and the same platform for every entity’s different persona? How do we use AI and data to find opportunities? How do we create a new and better experience for our partners on a single pane of glass, and how do they build their business via our platform ecosystem?” While the vision was huge, so was the drive to make it a success. To this end, a lot of talent was brought in from Silicon Valley to focus on developing the experience-first approach that Xvantage has. “It starts with customer experience, and then automation second,” Sanjib adds. “We worked on how to create a B2C experience in a B2B envrionment. It’s not easy: B2B is hard. How do you create the consumerised experience? We are learning all the time to get closer to that for partners. So that’s the journey we are on. “The journey is about every day understanding what works well but also what does not work so well, to take feedback and keep on listening to our partners to be better. We will never be perfect with Xvantage. It’s a journey that we’re on to become a B2B platform ecosystem and connect our partners seamlessly to our vendors. And the way we can prove it is by solving those complex problems in this industry through
Xvantage. It is not a tool, nor a website or a marketplace, but a journey and a platform ecosystem through which our partners can build their business.” Technology delivering value Of course, the technology Xvantage uses is constantly evolving too, but any new technology must have a benefit, Sanjib adds. “I’m not a believer in using shiny technology that no value,” he says. “Many times, for instance with AI, a lot of the industry try to work on some AI algorithm, then try to find a business problem that they can solve with it. In my mind, that’s not the right approach. You identify and really understand a business problem and then you find what technology can do to try to solve it.” Data foundation The foundation of the Xvantage platform is data. “It’s not just about building another data lake,” Sanjib says. “It’s about creating an operational data mesh that we have patents for. We have more than 30 patents pending. We have created an AI centre of excellence. “We are not building a fragmented marketplace. We want to have hardware, software, cloud, subscriptions and everything in one single platform, creating a unified experience for our partners. We are not just transacting, but looking at data insights, looking at every single technology, finding opportunities, and then helping our customers to grow." AI is central to Xvantage and has been from the beginning. “We started with data as a foundation,” he says. “My first hire was bringing a chief data officer to build the data foundation, and we then focused hard on AI models to create a different experience. “Today, it’s not about how we are using AI in Xvantage. Xvantage is AI and we are solving complex problems using AI. For instance, we are using AI to build our pricing models.
As we build, then we operate and deploy and create value. We create value through technology and capture value through operation and build it together. “ ”
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