Jagannadh Kanumuri, ACI Infotech CEO: “Our company cultivates an employee-centric culture focused on people goals like employee well-being and resilience while also focusing on our customers and partners, meeting their demands, and establishing long-term mutual relationships that go beyond the product or service.”

Founded in 2006, ACI Infotech has emerged as a global leader in technology and industry solutions, helping organizations navigate their digital transformation journeys with agility and innovation. Headquartered in Piscataway, New Jersey, the company’s extensive global presence spans five continents, with strategic delivery and innovation centers in the U.S., India, Budapest, Canada, and Mexico. ACI Infotech caters to a diverse clientele, including Fortune 500 companies across sectors such as financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, retail, telecom, e-commerce, and higher education. The inspiration for ACI Infotech stemmed from its founder’s early insights into the transformative power of technology. Armed with a Master’s degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Louisville, the founder witnessed the dynamics of the Y2K era, identifying a critical gap between technology, processes, and people. This vision laid the foundation for creating sustainable value through digital innovation.

ACI Infotech delivers comprehensive services, blending digital strategy, experience design, and technical expertise. Core offerings include IT strategy, enterprise applications, customer experience, intelligent automation, AI, big data, application modernization, cloud transformation, and cybersecurity. By embracing cloud-based solutions, ACI empowers organizations with private, public, and hybrid cloud options tailored to their unique needs. With a mission to uplift society through cutting-edge technology and a focus on creating long-term value, ACI Infotech continues to drive business excellence and enable organizations to thrive in a digitally-driven world.

In conversation with Jagannadh Kanumuri, CEO of ACI Infotech

Q. What methodology does ACI implement to exceed customer expectations?

In an increasingly globalized environment, incorporating innovation into the organizational DNA is a competitive differentiator and the foundation of ACI Infotech's value creation. As digital transformation accelerates, ACI Infotech is poised to take the lead. Our company cultivates an employee-centric culture focused on people goals like employee well-being and resilience while also focusing on our customers and partners, meeting their demands, and establishing long-term mutual relationships that go beyond the product or service.

We focus on some critical aspects to stay at the forefront:

• Leverage innovation pods to get the best out of ideas and deliver projects that clients appreciate.
• Incorporate the IMS methodology and Drive client transformation projects with speed and agility
• Leverage concept and engagement kits and make optimum use of Robust Cloud-Native API Microservices Frameworks, resulting in faster time-to-market in the digital age.

Q. As a new age global technology and services company, what are ACI’s key focus areas?

ACI Infotech, true to its mission, aspires to assist businesses in navigating the shift to imagine and build the new digital economy. In our journey ahead, the latest offerings and plans include enabling metaverse & blockchain/DLT, improving agility at Scale/Agile Pods, utilizing platforms & technologies, enabling change management & workforce transformation, optimizing MarTech & integrated marketing, implementing co-innovation and accelerated solution frameworks, offering managed Multi-Cloud/Hybrid Cloud services, building digital trust, ensure security risk management, improving cyber resilience and offering Customer Experience (CX) consulting.

Q. What strategies do you have in place to encourage innovation in your company?

ACI Infotech is striving to become a force multiplier by delivering innovative technology, intelligent processes, and motivated people. We are additionally seeking to improve agility, creativity, and adaptability by using cutting-edge technologies like AI, hybrid cloud, and intelligent workflows. We want to assist our clients at the nexus of digital customer experience, digital operational excellence, and digital innovation.

We are strengthening our positions in AI, cybersecurity, industrial IoT, and other areas to ensure long-term solutions. In terms of expansion, we intend to establish new centres of excellence and technology pods in key cities such as New Delhi, Singapore, Dubai, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong to ensure that we are close to our clients.

Q. Can you provide us with one or two success stories describing the challenges your clients faced and how ACI helped them overcome those challenges?

A Global FMCG Major Core Achievements: Data and Analytics Transformation - Data and Platform modernization program

Client the world’s largest food and beverage company had multiple on-premises and siloed systems to store and manage its data. These unintegrated systems and all business functions operated in siloes, which led to multiple versions of duplicate data and non-standard KPIs and measures for reporting. The arrangement hampered collaboration between business functions and created an environment for multiple “versions of the truth.” The client found it difficult to build an advanced analytical engine or unified reporting because of the additional effort needed to constantly aggregate data from the siloed systems. ACI and the client collaborated on the Client modernization program to develop and maintain a Microsoft Azure Data Lake in the cloud, tearing down siloes and providing reusable data assets that can be used by all business functions

Client had its overarching establishing a powerful enterprise data and business analytics strategy in place, they needed to operationalize it. In partnership with ACI, client developed a centralized BI system that provided users of all kinds from IT analysts to Senior Executives - self-services analytics leveraging Microsoft Power BI.

Sitting atop their existing SAP data warehousing system, this tool empowers users to create action and share their own bespoke data-driven insights. To maximize agility, data quality and usability, they built this new BI capability around 4 key components:

• BI tools
• Machine learning and statistical platforms
• Data management solutions
• Data governance and integration

A Multi-Billion Retail Convenience Store Major based in South Eastern US

Core Achievements: Martech and Loyalty Applications Transformation

• Loyalty Platform Analytical Support

• Building reports and dashboards, highlighting critical KPIs and key trends,
  for executive decision making

• Building ML-based models for data science use-cases like customer churn prediction, highly personalized coupon recommendations, etc.

• Azure Infrastructure Setup

• ACI team set up a robust, resilient and high-performant infrastructure for Marketing Data Team, in compliance with industry standards and is now performing regular maintenance and monitoring.

• Loyalty Intelligence Application (LIA)

• ACI team and all critical Business stakeholders, helped to design, architect and eventually set up a Power BI dashboard comprising all critical KPIs related to Loyalty Programs, Loyalty Revenue, Guest Profiling with excellent accuracy and complete automation.

• ACI team is now helping to add more key metrics (from Punchh Dashboard) into v2.0 and trying to create a single unified view of all critical KPIs associated with all RT programs for C-suite Executives.
  
  
• Loyalty Stability Dashboards
  
  
• ACI team has worked extensively in last 3 - 4 months in building dashboards, reporting various Loyalty Programs’ health and stability – FUEL VIP, Debit Card, EDLP, etc. These reports are being consumed by top level management for critical decision making and course correction.

Q. No doubt ACI is charting new territories in this segment. Given how frequently circumstances change, what plans for transformation are you pursuing to remain relevant now and in the future?

ACI Infotech is striving to become a force multiplier by delivering innovative technology, intelligent processes, and motivated people. We are additionally seeking to improve agility, creativity, and adaptability by using cutting-edge technologies like AI, hybrid cloud, and intelligent workflows. We want to assist our clients at the nexus of digital customer experience, digital operational excellence, and digital innovation.

We are strengthening our positions in AI, cybersecurity, industrial IoT, and other areas to ensure long-term solutions. In terms of expansion, we intend to establish new centers of excellence and technology pods in key cities such as New Delhi, Singapore, Dubai, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong to ensure that we are close

“ACI Infotech, true to its mission, aspires to assist businesses in navigating the shift to imagine and build the new digital economy.”