Our human-centered design approach solves for emotional benefits beyond functionality: UST Global

“We believe in creating a new era of social capital, creating jobs and being involved in something higher than ourselves.”

UST Global is a digital technology services company that provides next generation digital solutions for Global 1000 companies. The company’s mission is to ‘Transform Lives’ using the power of digital technologies. It focused on its customers and consumers.

Design capabilities bridge the gap between insight and action through its digital levers like mobile, social, analytics, cloud, cyber security, and augmented intelligence. The company takes innovation to the market with speed and agility; thereby ensuring commercial viability and profitability.

With a business model of ‘fewer CLIENTS, more ATTENTION’, the company strives for excellence in providing its clients with the best service and commitment to long-term client success. Headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, the company today has over 17,000 associates operating in 25 countries across four continents.

This client-centric focus forms thebasis for how UST, as a company, operate and serves its clients.Commitment to long-term client success empowers every associate to provide value and flexibility beyond the contract.

The industry-leading expertise found within its Centers of Excellence (CoEs) plays a key role in our success with clients. The CoEs deliver pragmatic IT solutions that allow clients to consistently achieve their most critical business objectives. Its Partner Program complements the Centers of Excellence. The program aims to develop strategic relationships with best-of-breed organizations to provide UST Global developers with advance access to new technology and educational resources.

The company adopts Six Sigma practices for developing its client-facing processes. Its centers in India are ISO 27001 certified and were assessed PCMM level 5 in 2004. These certifications and practices provide a qualified foundation for all UST Global service offerings and enable its clients to benefit internally.

Catch Us Here

Consumers are on the move, and the world now moves with them. The consumer is constantly connected, constantly consuming experiences and have constantly rising expectations. We live in a world that is going through a disruptive digital transformation. The rapid pace of technological advancement is affecting how people work, live and connect. Products and processes are reimagined and simplified as they adapt to heightened levels of consumer expectation. The key is innovation and successful digital implementation.

This new era offers endless opportunities to those who have the courage to replace what is with what if and what can be with what should be. The present and the future belong to such businesses.

Traditional IT services will continue to power a significant part of the new age experiences, but digital is more than application of technology, it presents the opportunity to create business value in an entirely new way; digital is also about how it can power innovation. Those who can leverage technologies, for e.g. mobile, social, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, the internet of things etc., along with design to create or reinvent consumer experiences from the ground-up will be the businesses that sustain and prosper; and needless to say, all of it has to be commercially viable and profitable to all involved.

As one of the fastest growing digital & IT services company in the world, UST Global delivers delivers speed and agility where it is most critical for our clients’ business. The company believes that it is very well positioned in the current market scenario to deliver a competitive advantage to our clients. UST Global partners with its clients to pre-empt digital disruption - creating digitally enabled experiences that uncover and expand new ways to create business value.

The company is successfully guided by its mission of transforming lives. As it transforms lives, it is focused on its customers and their consumers. Its design capabilities enables UST to bridge the gap between insight and action through its digital levers like mobile, social, analytics, cloud, Cyber security, and augmented intelligence. The company is uniquely positioned to enable client success through its pillars of Digital

Transformation, Human Centered Innovation and Acceleration of Possibilities.

UST Global is at the forefront of the innovation and digital disruption. Through its cutting-edge, consumer focused innovation; the company delivers real-world solutions that enable the clients to profitably transform their businesses and the lives of their customers.

A jist of the company’s journey by the CEO: Sajan Pillai

We had started 17 years ago with 14 people. Today we are 17000 people spread across 4 continents and 25 countries. Some of the world’s biggest corporations are our clients and they consider as their strategic advisor and partner.

We started during the cusp of the private equity/venture capital flow into dot-coms – money was plentiful but value was scarce. We decided we weren’t going to chase venture money and go to the dot-coms – we didn’t find a sustainable value proposition there. Instead, we focused on the Fortune 100 companies. This was counter-intuitive as people often told me that if you’re entering a market, go after the mid-sized and small players versus the large ones. But if you have one of the best execution models, why not work with the best? While the market was swarming with tech players that were primarily offering traditional outsourcing services, we positioned ourselves as a visionary company. We spurred innovation by striking major product development partnerships. Every year, we helped clients take products and services from concept to the marketplace.

When we started, we figured that, in order for a company to be successful for the next millennium, you need to have a purpose larger than oneself — something beyond a traditional sense of business operations – and hence our mission of Transforming Lives; which continues to guide us in this amazing journey.

In chit-chat with the CEO

What are the hardships you faced in the industry?

Today, challenges across industry would seem to be different but will essentially revolve around human experience and leveraging technology. We have deep domain knowledge in healthcare, retail, BFSI, Telecom and media. This knowledge and experience combined with our technological expertise helps us address this challenge much better than our competitors. We bring a human-centered, emotionally fuelled approach to design, enabled and realized digitally.

How are you different from your competitors?

Our business model of ‘fewer CLIENTS, more ATTENTION’ is one of our key differentiators. Today, the nexus of the digital revolution may appear on the surface to be technology, but it is actually the opportunity to design your business as a human experience. Our ability to codify emotional insights and frame design challenges around emotional outcomes allows us to deliver a competitive advantage to our clients. The designer’s involvement enables rapid, focused concept development. Our pre-fabricated digital building blocks and automated processes produce rapid, high quality prototypes. Embedded augmented intelligence, analytics, and machine learning provide iterative improvement over time.

The ability to take risk, to see things differently, and to have an ecosystem of partners to help the social capital we bring to the table is what differentiates us from our competitors. Our domain expertise, our ability to extract deep consumer insights combined with technology and talent enable us to digitally accelerate our client’s businesses.

We are committed to digitizing businesses to ensure a brighter, more secure future for our clients. UST is transforming these businesses through our entrepreneurial and innovative approach, which is delivered by our ingenious, trusted and visionary teams. By creating seamless end-to-end experiences, we gain insights, we imagine possibilities and we transform businesses.

 A brief of the products and services offered by the company:

Our services have evolved from being predominantly technology based to being driven by innovation delivering business outcomes; and our contractual models have evolved to Outcome-Based Pricing. Today, we are a digital & IT services company providing next generation innovative digital solutions specializing in design, cyber security, mobile, social, analytics, cloud and artificial intelligence. Our ability to codify emotional insights and frame design challenges around emotional outcomes allows us to deliver a competitive advantage to our clients; and make businesses commercially viable and profitable.

 An overview of the CEO: Sajan Pillai

Sajan Pillai is UST Global’s Chief Executive Officer and a member of its Board of Directors. As CEO, Sajan is responsible for the company’s growth and acquisitions. He leads the company’s global business operations through its state-of-the-art centers across 4 continents in 25 countries.

Sajan’s leadership of UST Global includes fostering the core value of innovation in the company. He ensures an ongoing environment that attracts dedicated and talented people, whom he then empowers to uncover new, measurable and sustainable ways of providing value to UST Global clients.

Sajan is currently leading UST Global to digitally disrupt and transform global businesses to make them commercially viable and profitable.

With an extensive background in the offshore IT industry, having served as co-founder of Softek Systems in India as well as an engineer in one of India’s top three consulting services companies, Sajan remains poised to lead UST Global into the future. Sajan also architected and managed several large software systems for MCI Telecommunications in the United States and subsequently held senior management positions in Tanning Systems, a US-based software solutions company.

Sajan is the executive sponsor for many programs that are focused on transforming societies that UST Global operates in; for e.g. the Step It Up America program for minority women and the Step It America program for Veterans, both of which are designed to attract, train and hire candidates interested and seeking careers in technology. Sajan also spearheads programs like the Grand Transformation Mexico and Impact India, which are focused on providing equal opportunities to those who might not have had them.

Sajan is as enthusiastic about nonprofit work as he is about business, and serves on the boards of multiple nonprofit organizations: the California Science Center, the Global Virus Network and Centro Fox in Mexico. The California Science Center provides hands-on activities around the principles of air, space and flight. The Global Virus Network strives to achieve accelerated and innovative solutions to human viral diseases. Centro Fox is the first presidential library in Mexico; contributing as a library, museum, study center, and forum for the advancement of democracy.

“We are at the forefront of understanding high fidelity consumer insights, translating it into meaningful innovation powered by digital capabilities and thereby enabling businesses to be profitable.”