FiveS Digital the most reliable technology-led business process management partner globally: Kapil Sharma, CEO, FiveS Digital

Tell us about FiveS Digital?

In 2009, FiveS Digital started as a Social Enterprise. Over the years, we expanded our horizons and entered the technology led BPM services domain. And after 13 years of providing quality business services, we have been focused on the most reliable technology led partner for our clients globally, solving their business process problems. With a perfect blend of human and machine intelligence, we provide robust and innovative solutions to streamline client’s business operations so they can focus on their core business proposition.

FiveS Digital is a technology-led Business Process Management organization with a meaningful customer and community-centric approach. Our core business revolves around Customer Experience, RPA/IPA-driven digital transformation, and Machine Learning / Trust & Safety Operations. We focus on revolutionizing user experience through holistic customer experience management. Going strong for 13 years now, we are making our presence felt in 9 cities across India, recently adding another site at Mohali in the Chandigarh Tri-city area & India’s First Diverse and Inclusive BPM workspace in Navi Mumbai.

We speak and process 13+ languages and are a 3500+ strong team, growing each day. As we grow exponentially, we have ensured that our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusivity remains undiluted.

Can you tell us about the solutions you provide, especially Chatbot, Data Annotation, Robotic Process Automation?

FiveS Digital’s focus is to help businesses solve problems and streamline functional operations. Our solutions and services can be broadly classified into three areas – Customer Experience (CX), Digital Transformation, and Data & Content. BPO, RPA, IPA, CX management, Omnichannel customer support, Chatbot, Data Annotation, and custom development are part of our solutions and services basket.

Digital transformation has dramatically impacted customer-brand interactions. Today, customers connect to brands from several channels and expect fast, customer-friendly, productive conversations at all interaction points. According to a research, 60% of all businesses will leverage bots in some parts of their customer journey by 2024. Bots expedite the ‘query-to-resolution’ journey of customers and have become one of the most efficient ways to connect with brands. At FiveS Digital, we train live software agents that provide intelligent, fast and user-friendly solutions to customers. By leveraging advanced programming and machine learning (ML) algorithms, FiveS Digital’s bot solutions are integrated with a human touch so that customers don’t feel like they’re in conversation with a robot; this makes the conversation more humane, adds to the customer confidence, and enhances customer loyalty. The chat/voice bot solutions are scalable, multi-lingual and cover diverse use cases in various industries like e-commerce, healthcare, FinTech, food, education, and more.

By 2025, approximately 463 exabytes of data will be created daily. That’s mammoth! Processing and annotating such amounts of data is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and one of the biggest limitations of AI implementation for organizations. FiveS Digital is one of the leading companies providing data annotation services (text, images and videos) for computer vision in AI and ML. We bridge human intelligence with machine caliber to help companies across the globe to solve complicated data challenges, improve operational efficiency, and reduce costs incurred in integrating data annotation processes.

Automation is the future. Any business eyeing sustainable success needs to automate its operations to ensure error-free operations, better customer experience, and low operational costs, all of which ultimately result in incremental profits. With FiveS Digital’s knowledge in AI, ML and RPA solutions, companies can better manage things like sales orders, invoices, HR data management, operations reporting, and more. Our team of experienced and knowledgeable professionals have an in-depth understanding of Robotic process automation (RPA) and how it can empower digital operations.

How heavily does FiveS integrate tech into its business?

Technology is at the forefront of all that we do. Our basic mantra is to merge human and machine intelligence to develop tech-driven solutions that solve problems faced by clients. Our team is equipped with extensive knowledge of all latest, futuristic technologies that are bound to change the business landscape. We integrate the tech-expertise in all our solutions aiming to automate business processes. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies are evolving and maturing continuously. With the growing need to scale businesses rapidly, it is essential to leverage technology to support this growth. We constantly look to scale our tech capabilities. Our recent collaboration with Roth Automation in the US is one such example. Roth Automation is a renowned name in the digital transformation space serving Fortune 500 businesses. This is attributed to its Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) and Conversational AI expertise, which takes repetitive business-critical tasks and activities, and automates them. This collaboration will help both companies in delivering highly advanced solutions to businesses to streamline and automate their processes and make them more efficient.

How do you use technology to differentiate from your competitors?

We are a concept tier-2/tier-3 BPM services provider. We like to call ourselves BOP (Business Operations Partner) for our customers because, with the changing world, this integration is a must for bringing value onboard. We offer contact center solutions enabled with omni-channel architecture and solution-based customer engagement, providing backend as well as voice support services to our customers within and outside India.

Not just in terms of technology and solutions that we provide, we set ourselves apart from the competition in various ways. Our idea of scaling FiveS Digital, along with other promoters, is to give back to the community while serving its clients. We strive to make a difference through the upliftment of society and the welfare of its people. Our large part of workforce consists of women (single mothers/widows/divorcees), people from a rural background, and differently abled people. In addition, this makes our job more interesting, while adding superior value to our customer’s business. Our company has three women leaders as its majority promoters, making us a diverse company with 60% women ownership.

FiveS Digital’s focus has been “evolution’; being the best in everything we do. If you look at it objectively, every organization is focusing on making tomorrow a better day for the clients and communities. Having a specific, unique vision for our business is one of the first things that sets us apart as a leader in the industry.

Why is it important to have the right blend of human and machine Intelligence for business success?

A lot of businesses are significantly investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive better decisions and automate processes. Today, relying on human intellect alone to make decisions is not enough. That said, it doesn’t necessarily mean that robots will replace humans at all levels. In fact, companies deploying AI to trim their workforce may see a spike in productivity, but only for the short term; it’s not a sustainable solution. What works as a solution is collaborative intelligence – a blend of machine and human intelligence. To make the most of AI and ML, companies must redefine their business processes and focus on building an approach where people and intelligent machines work hand-in-hand. Humans need to train machines to perform specific tasks, explain the outcome of the tasks, and ensure the responsible use of machines. On the other hand, machines boost people’s cognitive strengths, enhance human skills to extend physical capabilities, and perform routine business tasks, thereby liberating people for higher-level tasks requiring human skills like leadership, creative thinking, judgment, etc.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?

We have set bold targets for ourselves for the upcoming five years. We plan to grow 10x. There’s a lot we have to do. Given the potential and scale of India’s economy and contribution to the global economy, grave concern about the availability of relevant skill sets by 2030 is very much there. We aim to build a data & technology-led company that transforms clients’ business processes, meeting their goals every single time by creating opportunities for women, differently abled & financially backward youth.

The team is looking to scale further to deliver impact sustainably, partnering with the community and various skilling platforms plus initiatives. We will be an equal, diverse and inclusive workplace, providing 7k+ livelihoods globally by 2025, focusing on under-developed countries. We aspire to be a leader in CX management and ML Ops, led by technology and leveraging gig workers.

Our 10X journey so far has been all about learning & solving for repeatable success. While growth and financial milestones are in place, one milestone that we are on the cusp of achieving is a 50%+ diversity ratio by the end of this financial year, which for us, is a significant milestone.

We aim to focus and invest in improving employability in the locations we operate from and create sustainable employment opportunities for 7k+ people by 2025.