Roman Rafiq is a Passionate technologist & digital transformational leader with 20+ years of experience in Information Technology and Business Process Management. He has in-depth expertise across a wide range of technologies, as well as business acumen to understand both external and internal business drivers. He possesses a solid understanding of all phases of a healthy IT ecosystem including strategy, architecture, engineering, implementation, and operations. He has demonstrated critical thinking and planning at a strategic & global level. He can also translate strategic plans into specific business objectives and implement effective IT processes.
Roman has a proven track record in techno-commercial roles, committed to excellence at the individual, group, and organizational levels. His professional acquisition includes People Management along with broad experience in operations, implementing policies and procedures, strategic planning, vendor management, cost reduction, budgeting, end-to-end technology project design & planning, development, and deployment. He also possesses knowledge of applicable laws and regulations. Roman has been felicitated with the "Indian Achiever' Business Leadership Award", "Super CTO Award", "Best CIO Award in The Age of Disruption" and "CIO Next Award" from distinguished establishments.
At IGT Solutions, Roman is responsible for delivering end-to-end Technology, Security, and drive Digital service worldwide for the company including planning and identifying opportunities for automation, service quality improvement with continuous improvement. He is known for his implementation of the IT risk and security strategy program, managing information security controls and implementation across global delivery locations, and being compliant with most of the international data security and privacy regulations. His governance has achieved a continuous improvement of Security Operation Centre (SOC), covering VA-PT, DLP, Endpoint Security, SIEM, Cloud Computing, End-point Security, and Enterprise Security. He verifies the effectiveness of the organization's IT Security Controls against – ISO 27001, PCI-DSS standards, ISAE and country-specific regulations, legal compliance along with technology and security controls to comply with GDPR. He leads an extremely talented team of 130+ infrastructure and security engineering professionals who define, manage and support the entire operations infrastructure globally (Across the USA, India, Philippines, UAE, Romania, China, Columbia, Malaysia & Indonesia). He is also responsible for the design, implementation, and maintenance of the business continuity management system for global IGT operations. The ensured comprehensive disaster recovery architecture is maintained to ensure compliance with required RPOs and RTOs during business continuity events
With Roman's leadership, the development of various rapid solutions have occurred based on the latest desktop virtualization, effective security coverage for WFH, cloud telephony, quick development of work at home while ensuring cybersecurity – all these solutions were quick to implement and designed to scale and at the same time securing a sustainable future for the business.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life and businesses across the globe. Amid this crisis, enterprises need to revamp their strategy toward remote means of working and collaboration. The IT team at IGT Solutions was armed to handle this precarious situation using agility, speed, and innovation to address business continuity to serve customers while enabling and safeguarding the interests of its employees. They stood together with their clients and partners to equip and enable business normalcy.
Their topmost priority was to help their customers meet and overcome their challenges. To help businesses adapt during this fast-moving pandemic, the company developed various rapid solutions based on the latest desktop virtualization, effective security coverage for WFH, cloud telephony, their solutions were quick to implement and designed to scale, at the same time securing a sustainable future for the business. Nearly 50% of the production forces were targeted on March 20 and finally achieved 95%+ by mid-April 20. IGT leveraged digital solutions for its home-based users, notably activated within weeks of enacting initial safety measures, in compliance with security standards and certifications.
COVID also increased the likelihood of cyber-attacks. Some of the risk areas that were looked upon and addressed on priority to keep the data safe & secure include insecure remote connections to the office, increased personal use of company devices, and confidentiality at home. Data breaches and leaks also occurred a lot. During this time, IGT introduced a new Security Controls and Assessment Tool to ensure ongoing surveillance of the risk environment, monitoring internal and external threats via a digitally intelligent and advanced analytics capability. The combination of process & tools leverages advanced analytics to calculate inherent and residual risks, associated with regulatory compliance, risk management, and cybersecurity.
For Roman, optimizing cost while delivering new normal was a key task at hand. Instead of investing in upgrading older infrastructure and data centers, measures were taken to conserve capital and make the move to cloud services to satisfy near-term demand. Quick deployment of additional digital capabilities was carried to keep business running and employees and customers connected. With the new emerging reality, the company continued to build a digital backbone using cloud-native solutions, anywhere connectivity, hybrid multi-cloud architectures, and an automated & secure delivery chain with the speed and flexibility to meet rapidly evolving business needs.
COVID-19 has been the largest experiment of testing the need for a flexible, remote-ready workforce. The experience and success which IGT was able to achieve with the above approach are evident. It can provide a template for other organizations having similar challenges to navigate successfully and achieve their objectives. They built a hybrid cloud environment to flex capacity as needed d. The crisis highlighted the need to quickly determine the health to prevent downtime of systems serving their customers in their time of need. They conducted business impact assessments to identify critical applications and map to underlying infrastructure and network components. They aimed to determine additional infrastructure and network capabilities and solutions needed to keep the business running and the users productive. They developed a hybrid, multi-cloud strategy, including cloud-native capabilities, starting with a vision, guiding principles, and architecture design principles. They updated the service management processes (incident, change, request, event) to address infrastructure changes due to the current situation and introduced self-service channels to end-users. Before calling the IT helpdesk, users are given the option for self-service with a single portal of controlled access. Chatbots are to be introduced for simple communication and requests.
Working from home showed a 13.5% increase in agent productivity compared to working from the office There was a 50% reduction in employee Attrition compared to Q4 and a 46% reduction in shrinkages (Domestic Customer wants the agent to WFO). 92% of the training throughout we're achieved compared to ~76% in Q4. There was a 16% reduction in AHT with NVA reduction. There was a consistent Quality of delivery, stable at 92% before and after the WFH shift. Almost 7-10% reduction occurred in price compared to WFO. There was also 33% faster recruitment owing to an extended hiring pool.
While the company has taken a lot of measures to implement various tools and measures to support the business and the customers, the rapid migration to digital technologies driven by the pandemic will continue into the recovery. The pandemic has created an environment of sink or swim, and IGT will have to accelerate digital transformation strategies to enable users to continue to connect to customers. From the increased shift on remote services, the need for fast and secure digital access has never been greater. To accelerate the digital transformation, IGT will have to prioritize cross-functional collaboration and strategic partnerships. Digital transformation projects post-pandemic will focus on improving the remote work experience. This will include moves as simple as moving away from traditional PBX phone systems in favor of Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), or as complex as migrating from legacy to cloud solutions.
In the post-COVID-19 world, cyber attackers are increasingly seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in an organization's security infrastructure that is being shifted to remote working. All these will uplift the cybersecurity sector with the technology enablement and strategies that businesses should adopt in the post-Covid-19 world to improve the security of their remote users and devices along with the data associated with them. While IGT will be investing more in security automation so that networks can be run with the least amount of human intervention and human errors. But that doesn't mean that we will no longer need human resources, far from it. To be successful, companies need to rely on people that can oversee their automation programs, analyze data, and develop insights. This may mean retraining security professionals whose jobs are side-lined by automation so they can help run and manage new programs.
IGT holds enterprise partnerships with Microsoft, Cisco, Zscaler, ServiceNow & Salesforce to enable the WFH services effectively, efficiently & securely. IGT has partnered with all these OEMs to deliver to changing business needs aside from introducing certain internal processes & policy changes. There have been changes in the technology processes from WFH 1.0 to WFH 2.0.
