Interview with Amit Tyagi from Infinite

As the Vice President at Infinite, how do you contribute to setting the strategic direction for the engineering and technology initiatives within the company?

At Infinite, I play an IT executive role and help set up the strategic direction for engineering and technology initiatives within the company by employing a multifaceted approach:

I closely work with the Telecom, and Media Business Unit to align the overall business objectives and identify how emerging communications technology can support and drive these objectives forward. Our IT strategy is fully aligned with the company’s broader business goals. We foster a culture of innovation across the organization by encouraging Hackathons, Tech events, Proof of Concepts, and innovative ideas.

We collaborate and engage with leaders within the organization, Industry practitioners, clients, and customers across different industries to gather insights, pain points, and diverse perspectives. Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to measure the success of our technology initiatives. By continuously monitoring progress and evaluating outcomes against predefined goals, I make necessary adjustments to keep our initiatives on track.

Though the industry keeps changing with technology advancements, keeping our strategy in line with our business objectives positions us to drive sustainable growth and competitive advantage.

Could you describe your approach to cultivating strong relationships with clients, partners, and key stakeholders?

There is a saying “Trust can move the mountains”. My relationships are based on mutual trust, and I truly mean it when I make commitments to my clients, partners, and key stakeholders.

I start by thoroughly understanding the needs, goals, and expectations of my clients. I believe in maintaining open and transparent communication channels. My style is to focus on delivering value consistently. By understanding their objectives, I seek opportunities to exceed expectations and offer innovative solutions that align with their goals.

I ensure regular reviews of the program’s progress, milestones, and any potential issues. This helps in building trust and confidence in our working relationship.

I give priority to my clients, and I am always available for their questions, inquiries, concerns, and feedback. Whether it’s through emails, calls, or meetings, I aim to provide timely responses and demonstrate that their needs are my top priority. I take the time to build genuine connections by showing interest in their work, sharing relevant insights, and finding common ground beyond business matters.

I actively seek feedback from clients, partners, and stakeholders to understand areas of improvement and opportunities for growth. This demonstrates my commitment to continuous improvement and reinforces their role as valued collaborators.

How do you stay updated on the latest trends and advancements in Telcos, Media, Utilities, and Fintech industries?

First and foremost, I spend a lot of time with my Telco, Media, Utilities, and Fintech clients where I dwell into practical industry problems and get meaningful insights into emerging technologies, market trends, regulatory changes, and competitive landscapes.

I maintain close relationships with technology vendors and solution providers that specialize in serving our IT needs. These partnerships allow me to stay informed about new product offerings, upcoming releases, and industry trends directly from the source.

I also leverage our alliance and analyst partners who help us with analyst reports and market research studies to identify strategic opportunities and anticipate future developments.

I make sure to attend relevant conferences, seminars, and industry events. I keep professional development by enrolling in relevant courses, certifications, events, and workshops These events provide opportunities to hear from industry experts, participate in panel discussions, and gain firsthand exposure to new technologies and innovations shaping the industry.

By staying current with evolving industry practices and technologies, I ensure that my knowledge remains up-to-date and relevant.

Can you share an example where your leadership directly influenced the successful implementation of a challenging technical project?

I would like to share my experience with one of the complex challenging programs “System of Insights” (SOI).

Background: The program was developed for a leading global communication & telecom service provider with the world’s most connected IP network with 321 offices in 75 countries. More than 200 state-of-the-art data centers in 22 countries help to manage even the most complex networks in a wide range of industries.

The need was to build a BIG Data analytics solution on the telecom call log using the Hadoop ecosystem. Analytics solution was delivered using automated reports built on top of gigantic unstructured log data to increase customer satisfaction levels.

Solution Overview: We build a unified System of Insights platform to support multiple Analytics use cases cutting across Digital, Marketing, Sales, and Service areas. The Objective was to build an end-to-end Analytical platform that supports omni-channel use cases to build customer DNA. We followed the “Northstar Architecture” – A Multi-layer architecture that supports BIG Data, Predictive Analytics, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence

Technical Challenges: Drive business functions by using complex machine learning algorithms that deliver business functions leveraging statistical computer languages (Python, Scala, PySpark, Java, SQL, etc.) to manipulate data and draw consumer insights from large data sets.

Benefits: The platform provided near real-time insights into customer and consumer behavior to make business decisions. Integrated data analytics to various channels that include .com, mobile app, Agent Portal, Chat Bots, IVR.

This was a highly forward tech program where I defined a clear vision of the future and capitalized on emerging trends and opportunities. The team was structured into empowered self-organizing POD teams to make decisions quickly and adapt to changing priorities. We often ran into technical challenges and I had to challenge the status quo, pushing the boundary for new solutions while providing the team a supportive environment for experimentation and risk-taking.

This method of trust-based leadership allowed us to develop a 1 team approach where collaboration was celebrated with small wins and allowed us to remain agile, focused, and creative.

How do you ensure that Infinite stays at the forefront of industry trends and advancements in the fields relevant to the company’s focus?

I believe that adopting an agile approach in responding to changing market dynamics helps in the advancement in new trends and technology. We make significant investments in our research and development practices in AI, Analytics, Cloud, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, and others.

At Infinite, the leadership, practices, and analyst partnerships compile market trends, competition analysis, and emerging technologies through comprehensive market research. We collaborate with industry experts, thought leaders, and premier academic institutes (Stanford, Wharton, MIT, etc) to collaborate and knowledge sharing across organizations. We sponsor and participate in Tech events, hackathons, tech competitions, and conferences to exchange ideas with the brightest minds. These platforms help us in the experimentation, prototyping, and testing of new technologies and ideas, ensuring that we stay ahead of the curve.

We also collect feedback from our clients and customers through CSAT, Delivery & Technology Scorecards, systems performance feedback, and stakeholder interviews, to gather insights into evolving market demands and expectations.

Can you provide insights into the key considerations and best practices you prioritize in platform engineering to ensure efficiency and reliability?

In platform engineering, efficiency and reliability are very important aspects. Here are some key considerations and best practices I prioritize:

Even before we begin the design, we carefully understand the platform demand. During the design phase, we employ scalable architecture patterns such as microservices or serverless, implementing horizontal scaling techniques, and using technologies that support elasticity.

We also implement redundancy at various levels, utilizing fault-tolerant design patterns, backup and load balancers, and conduct thorough testing with negative scenarios. We test security through encryption, authentication, authorization, and regular security audits

To meet service-level objectives (SLOs), we deploy performance profiling, caching, and database optimizations, and reduce latency in the data processing. We utilize various tools for real-time monitoring, logging, and metrics collection to enable quick detection of anomalies and performance degradation.

Finally, our  CI/CD pipelines facilitate frequent and reliable software releases. Automating testing, deployment Embracing automation for deployment, scaling, and maintenance tasks improves efficiency and reduces human error.

With bugs and new features we iterative refine processes and incorporate lessons learned to ensure ongoing efficiency and reliability enhancements.

Discussing customer experience, how does technology play a role in enhancing the end-user experience for customers at Infinite?

In enhancing the end-user experience for customers at Infinite, we invest in data research, Journey insights, and experience development through various methods:

Personalization: Through advanced data analytics and AI algorithms, Infinite tailors products and services to meet the specific needs and preferences of individual customers. With the help of technologies like chatbots, AI-powered virtual assistants, and automated response systems, we enhance our ability to respond to our customers efficiently. This personalization fosters a deeper connection between our customers and the brand, leading to increased satisfaction and loyalty.

Journey Mapping: By creating checkpoints in our journey maps, we prioritize key moments and instill a journey-oriented mindset

Omni-channel Engagement: We use technology to enable seamless interactions across multiple channels such as mobile apps, websites, social media platforms, and physical touchpoints. This ensures that customers can engage with Infinite through their preferred channels, enhancing convenience and accessibility.

Predictive Analytics: By leveraging big data and predictive analytics, we anticipate customer needs and behavior patterns. This proactive approach enables Infinite to offer personalized recommendations, proactive support, and relevant solutions, thereby enhancing the overall customer experience.

IoT Integration: Integration of Internet of Things (IoT) devices enables us to offer connected solutions that enhance convenience and efficiency for customers. For example, our healthcare offerings – The Infinite Zyter platform provide real-time health monitoring and predictive care services, ensuring a healthy lifestyle and emergency support in need.

In the platform engineering landscape, how do you oversee the development and maintenance of robust and scalable platforms at Infinite?

At Infinite, we have adopted a product-centric approach to our engineering platforms. We architect our platforms as a set of interconnected modules or microservices that can be easily integrated with different products. This modular architecture not only enhances scalability and flexibility but also accelerates time-to-market.

We promote an open communication culture with cross-collaboration between our engineering teams and I give flexibility to my teams to tailor the platform to resonate the customer-centric design to specific use cases, add custom features, integrate third-party services and tools they need to innovate and differentiate our products.

We have automated our testing and deployments, and follow Agile principles to build high-performance teams and use early feedback and usability testing in the platform development lifecycle for optimal results.

By leveraging cloud, data analytics, and insights to monitor performance, reliability, and user experience. By analyzing user behavior, performance metrics, and market trends, we identify opportunities for enhancement and refinement.

We also follow the Kanban process for some of our maintenance projects and track incidents through a blameless SRE process.