SLID/SLASSCOM webinar on ‘Leveraging Technology for Post-Covid Business Transformation’

The Sri Lanka Institute of Directors (SLID) together with the Sri Lanka Association of Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM) organized a webinar, moderated by Dilshan Rodrigo-Chief Operating Officer of Hatton National Bank Plc., to discuss, explore and share insights on “Leveraging Technology to Transform Business in the Post-Covid Era”.

The keynote address was delivered by Uber’s Global Head of Support Operations and Co-Chair for Women of Uber – Lisa Stoner. The panel comprised of two eminent technology and business leaders Madu Ratnayake-Executive Vice President, Global CIO and General Manager of Virtusa Sri Lanka Operations/Independent Director of HNB and Director of ICTA, and Asanka Ratnayake-Group Director of Hayleys Advantis Limited.

“Covid brought unprecedented times to Uber and to everyone else. From connecting 16 million trips per day in March 2020, we went on to very publicly urging our riders to stay at home. During this time Uber fundamentally redefined its mission for the year and went from ‘setting the world in motion’ to ‘moving only what matters’. We closed all our offices and moved tens of thousands of workers home although Uber did not have a work from home environment. During this time, under the leadership of the CEO and of the Board one of the key principles we followed was that we would do the right thing and empowered business leaders in every market to make decisions around doing the right thing. Every positive matter we were able to do was absolutely enabled by our people and technical innovation” said Lisa Stoner adding that during the Covid period, Uber’s business changed from being a rides business to a delivery business and also saw a complete change in their top markets.

“We started a campaign to get local restaurants on the Uber platform which meant we had to onboard them as quickly as possible. To achieve this, we made some internal technology changes and most importantly we leveraged a lot of small startup technology tools available for menu creation etc. As a young company we had a lot of pockets and places to incorporate technical innovation including machine learning” she said.

She highlighted that technology automation, diversity and inclusion, relentless elevation of standards, and changing the definition of success as the things that helped Uber to come out of Covid stronger than before. On the automation front, Uber used machine learning and predictions to predict most likely issues helping customers to reach out to Uber more easily while fully automating the customer self-help process devoid of agent involvement resulting in a high level of efficiency and positive customer experience. She also said that customer experience will be a priority for Uber in 2021. Lisa noted that it is important to recognize the pace of change of business and to accordingly adopt technology which will also help to push the bar higher, challenging one to think about what diversity means to the team and whether one does actually have a diverse team which values ideas over hierarchy.