The Intellect edge

Vol - 17 | Mar 2024

Foreword

Design Thinking for Digital and Cognitive Enterprise

This year marked the one-year anniversary of our groundbreaking eMACH.ai suite. Last year on February 21st, Intellect unveiled eMACH.ai, our First Principle Technology suite tailored specifically for strategic thinking bankers.

Arun Jain

eMACH.ai brings Customers, whether Retail, HNI, SME, or Corporate, to the centre and looks at what events happen when they need financial services. Intellects eMACH.ai Technology leveraged the smartness of the Cloud to design a Banker’s own composable starting from an Event designer, ready to use deeply rich functional Microservices and a score of APIs on Cloud Headless. When we combine these four principles, it creates a magical name for our Technology eMACH—events, Microservices, APIs, Cloud, and Headless.

We celebrated eMACH.ai‘s first anniversary with 329 functional, rich, and technologically independent Microservices, up from 285 last year. We celebrate wiring 535 events using 1757 APIs for Designing a Composable Experience by our bankers or partners.

As we reflect on the journey thus far, we are deeply grateful for the invaluable contributions of Intellect’s research team and associates, whose collective efforts have been instrumental in shaping the success of eMACH.ai.

Arun Jain
Chairman and Managing Director
Intellect Design Arena Limited

Cover Story

Intellect Launches its ‘First Principles’ Technology suite, eMACH.ai, for Technology-suave Bankers in Europe (London & Paris), Middle East and Africa

eMACH.ai empowers banks with 329 Microservices, 1757 APIs and 535 Events, enabling them to design future-ready technology solutions

This suite of First Principles Technology keeps a bank’s customer in focus, be it Retail, HNI, SME, or Corporate, the events in their financial journey, or events created by bank operations or events generated by regulators and compliance. Financial institutions orchestrate their offerings based on these events to ensure customer satisfaction and regulatory compliance. This orchestration is done using a well-defined set of self-sufficient services referred to as Microservices in the tech community.

CoverstoryeMACH Launches in Dubai
CoverstoryeMACH Launches in London

From left to right – Shishir Jha – SVP, Sales Client partner, iGTB, UAE; Lalit Motwani– SVP, Regional Head Sales, iGTB, Middle East Region; Yasar Yilmaz– Global Industry Advisor, FSI, Microsoft Worldwide Industry Black Belt Business Unit; Sanjeeb Chaudhuri – Growth Advisory Board, iGCB; Osama Ben Saleh Bukhari – CEO, Alfaris International Group – Head of Banking Committee, ICC Saudi Arabia; Arun Jain – CMD & Chief Architect, Intellect Design Arena; Zulfiquar Sulaiman – Ex Advisor, Central Bank of the UAE, Seasoned Banker, Board member – subsidiary of CBUAE and remuneration and nomination committee, Consultant; Srinivasan Sampath – Acting Group Chief Technology Officer at First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB); Nitin Bhargava – COO, Al Masraf Bank; Ramakrishnan Viswanathan – senior Partner, Cedar Management Consulting International; Rajesh Saxena – CEO, iGCB; Amit Gupta – Executive Vice President, Partner, COO & Co-Head, iGTB

To provide complete services from approval to credit decisioning to risk compliance to regulatory reporting, corporate banking ecosystems like liquidity, payments, cash management, virtual accounts, SME lending, Corporate DDA and trade & supply chain finance, these Microservices must collaborate with other services. According to the tech fraternity, the agreed protocol of defined agreement with other services is called API – Application Programming Interface. These Events, Microservices and APIs deployed on a native Cloud environment, deliver a seamless experience, either through the feature-built UI/UX or Headless, where financial institutions can create their UI/UX based on their unique requirements. With embedded AI for operational efficiency and smart decisioning, eMACH.ai is the most comprehensive ‘First Principles’ Technology addressing the current and future needs of any Financial institution.  Read more

Spotlight

IIM-Calcutta signs Institutional Partnership with School of Design Thinking and Mission Samriddhi to strengthen Design Thinking focus in the Academic curriculum
  • SoDT will be the partner for IIMC in the application of Design Thinking across multiple domains by using its proprietary “Design The Thinking® mindset approach as a prerequisite for problem-solving and innovation.
  • Mission Samriddhi will collaborate in the areas of community-impacting social initiatives and projects by leveraging their Community Development Framework and the Research Expertise of IIMC.

Higher education in the country is on the threshold of change. The academic impetus today warrants a wider and deeper understanding of the issues which requires a change in the way issues are perceived. Albert Einstein notably said, “No problem can be solved by the same kind of thinking that created it.” Keeping that in mind, along with the changing student demographics and new technologies, universities are expected to reconsider their curriculum. Design Thinking offers important pathways for shaping these imperative new models and offers a deliberate, structured process for solving problems and fostering innovation.

Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, one of the most renowned business schools and the first IIM to be established in the country, School of Design Thinking, established in 2016 with a commitment to create awareness about Design Thinking as a ‘Human Centered – Future Focused’ approach to society and Mission Samriddhi, a social impact platform dedicated to holistic development of Rural India, today signed a Tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote Design Thinking for institutional leadership. Professor Saibal Chattopadhyay, Director-in-Charge, IIM Calcutta, Professor Bhaskar Chakrabarti, Dean (Academic), IIM Calcutta, Mr. Arun Jain, CMD Intellect Design Arena & Founder-Trustee, Mission Samriddhi and Dr. Anbu Rathinavel, Co-Founder & Head, School of Design Thinking graced the occasion at the signing ceremony. This MoU will be valid for a period of 3 years.

spotlight

From left to right: Dr. Anbu Rathinavel, Co-Founder & Head, School of Design Thinking; Mr. Arun Jain, CMD Intellect Design Arena & Founder-Trustee, Mission Samriddhi; Professor Saibal Chattopadhyay, Director-in-Charge, IIM Calcutta

The collaboration of IIMC, SoDT and Mission Samriddhi will help in creating ‘India’s first-of-its-kind Center of Excellence for Design Thinking in a premier Business School. This center will be the hub for all Design Thinking initiatives taken up by IIMC and associated organisations. School of Design Thinking, credited with framing India’s first program on ‘Design The Thinking®’ tailor-made for academics, will support this initiative through special courses for the students and other stakeholders in IIMC.

Mission Samriddhi, through its Community Development Framework, works on the design and development of projects that are sustainable and capable of scale to impact the larger population positively. It will support this initiative by coordinating with IIMC to reach out to rural clusters in the region. Read more

Milestone:

Celebrating One Year of eMACH.ai Success

School of Design Thinking and Intellect’s ‘1st National Conclave on Design Thinking for Academic Leaders’ Propels ‘Talent 2040’ Agenda Read More

Recent Success & Implementation

Intellect in the News

Industry Watch

Stay up to date with what is happening in the world of FinTech, with the latest research and articles.

Design thinking for entrepreneurs

Design thinking helps us find the right problems to solve and to design and deliver products/services/experiences that are not only memorable but also meaningful at the same time

How would you define customer experience? Speed? Convenience? Personalisation? Efficiency? Consistency? If you said all of the above, you’re headed the right way…but is that all? When a customer describes the experience you delivered using two words – meaningful and memorable – you are in the right place. If you deliver an experience that is only meaningful or only memorable, you have work to do. Lots of it.

So, how can a company overcome this seemingly insurmountable task? This is where ‘Design Thinking’ and a human-centred design lend a helping hand. A human-centred design can help us lay the foundation for delivering an experience that customers love and also love to talk about. Design Thinking helps us find the right problems to solve, and to design and deliver products/services/experiences that are not only memorable, but also meaningful.

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Capturing the full value of generative AI in banking

Generative AI (gen AI) burst onto the scene in early 2023 and is showing clearly positive results—and raising new potential risks—for organizations worldwide. Banking leaders appear to be on board, even with the possible complications. Two-thirds of senior digital and analytics leaders attending a recent McKinsey forum on gen AI said they believed that the technology will fundamentally change the way they do business. The pressing questions for banking institutions are how and where to use gen AI most effectively, and how to ensure the applications are fully adopted and scaled within their organizations.

The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that among industries globally, gen AI could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually in value across the 63 use cases it analyzed. Among industry sectors, banking is expected to have one of the largest opportunities: an annual potential of $200 billion to $340 billion (equivalent to 9 to 15 percent of operating profits), largely from increased productivity (exhibit).

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Design Thinking For Complex Problems

Design thinking is a problem-solving process that encourages us to rethink the world and how people connect through products, systems or institutions. Leading brands globally use design thinking to innovate and achieve results.

I’ve found that design thinking can be particularly effective for tackling complex problems, which will become more common in a future marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Complex problems lack a clear formulation or true/false solution and involve diverse perspectives on the situation. This is unlike well-defined or “tame” problems where the issue is clear and a solution can be found by applying rules or technical knowledge.

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Design thinking: All you need to know

How design thinking is revolutionising innovation and the way products, services, processes, and organisations are developed and grown.

In the present world of rapid technological advancements, and shifting consumer preferences, traditional approaches to innovation and design have often fallen short. And here’s where design thinking comes to the rescue. It is a dynamic human-centred methodology that has gained significance across industries as a powerful tool for driving innovation, enhancing user experiences, and tackling intricate challenges. In this article, we will delve into the core concepts, stages, benefits, and real-world applications of design thinking.

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