Interaction - Javed Tapia, Chairman & Chief Mentor, Clover Infotech

Please take us through the clovers’ recent been at Oracle Fusion, Oracle Cloud infrastructure, and On-Prem solutions.

If you look at Clover's history, we've been an Oracle-focused company since our very inception. Way back when you had multiple databases out there, we took our bets on Oracle and that's where we kind of started our journey.

We find ourselves nice position today where we are the leading partner for Oracle across the entire technology stack, so if you look at whether it be Oracle fusion, we've just kind of had a very interesting and exciting win across one of India's leading education companies where we've implemented fusion in a short span of 5 months, we won more than half a dozen deals in the Middle East in the last 6 months on Oracle Fusion.

Needless to say, we were the first Oracle fusion implementation on GST in the country. We were the real pioneers in that sense. On the fusion side, we've done deals across the whole application whether it be financial or data intelligence platform, supply chain, HCM, manufacturing. So, all the modules are across fusion. 

Now if we move to the second part of our whole Oracle business is the Oracle cloud infrastructure. There too, we have done some very interesting and challenging work for one of the largest hospitality chains in the country. We have moved their Oracle business infrastructure to OCI, we migrated their core applications also to the cloud.

For large insurance broker, we moved their digital applications to OCI. We've also done a lot of work in terms of building digital applications on web centers and for banks and NBFCs. One of our key strengths has been, how you not only migrate to the cloud but, how do you do it optimally. how do you do it in a way where a customer doesn't feel any pain or there is no loss in terms of downtime or in terms of servicing or anything like that?

On-Prem traditionally has been where we started, and we can't take that away and there are a lot of On-Prem customers. So, for us On-Prem, whether in terms of database where Oracle e-business, those are other areas also where we have a significant presence. One thing we look to is how we give the best possible solution to our customers and whichever part of the Oracle stack it is on, we need to be sure that we are giving them the most optimal solution for their requirements.

Can you please elaborate what are the key factors that have contributed to Clover Infotech and Oracle for this long-standing relationship?

As I mentioned, what differentiates us is that over the years we've built a fair deal of expertise, which we have gained by not only working on customer solutions but also in terms of building our competencies in-house. We have something called Clover Academy where we focus on building expertise within our teams on the Oracle technology stack, so that is one area where we are completely focused.

We have a global alumni group where our alumni from Clover Academy are spread across the Oracle world globally and we often find them connecting and saying, oh, you know we started life as a trainee in Clover Academy, so it's a very strategic positioning that we have taken for ourselves that it's not about just dealing with technologies and dealing with clients. It's about how we build our competencies and how we build our capabilities in our people.

The other thing is that we've built frameworks, we've built solutions, and we've built accelerators. With the in-depth knowledge we built a kind of a landscape that allows us to optimally return to customers on their Oracle investment.

Could you also provide insights into the significant traction Clover Infotech has observed in terms of wins across Oracle Fusion OCI and On-Prem products?

We've done some very interesting work for a very large hospitality chain, one of the largest in the country. We've done work for a leading education on Fusion. We've done more than half a dozen deals in the Middle East. So, we have a very large engagement ongoing with Oracle currently.

Over the years this has only been increasing, not only in size, but also in terms of scale, the kind of opportunities that we're dealing with today are no longer small opportunities whether in terms of location or in terms of complexity. And I think that has been our true partnership with Oracle and we work closely with them to make sure that customer is successful. That is where I think the key to our relationship lies.

You talked about the ROIs. What's your core mission that covers Oracle-focused Centre of Excellence? How will you use AI and automation to improve the overall client ROI?

Given that we are working extensively on Oracle implementations and projects on Oracle Fusion OCI, the COE us is our go-to platform in terms of building capability and state-of-the-art solutions. We have the best of technology and infrastructure there. We have Oracle-certified people. We've recently certified more than 1500 of our employees on various Oracle solutions.

So the key here is to get the best human, get the best kind of trainers who would be able to impart that knowledge, and our COE will then focus in terms of excellence in terms of innovation. I think there's a lot of innovation that we can do. We can create new frameworks, accelerators, methodologies, and all of this around Oracle products so that our customers will be able to leverage the best of Oracle technologies.

And as you mentioned, it also goes on to how we build solutions from an AI and ML perspective. On top of these, customers will derive further value in terms of using Clover as the partner for these implementations.

How does Clover Infotech plan to integrate domain expert technology, talent, and digital infrastructure within the Center of Excellence to ensure optimal performance and value delivery to the clients?

Every project that we deliver, we gain some insight and in-depth experience, and we gain some knowledge. This was traditionally for us across the banking and the financial services industry. Now we can leverage that across sectors, so that, for us, has been to leverage our domain expertise, which we have gained in banking.

Now how do we take it to other sectors and how do we make that multi-dimensional is one thing that's very important for us. Our Coe as I mentioned to you has a world-class infrastructure so, we are the best functional, domain, and technology experts In every project we work on there is something unique that we bring to the table. I think the way we approach our implementation or a solution is not just a standard of how we just get this job done.

For us, it is how we get it done in the fastest possible time, in the best manner and to do it in a way where the client sees a differentiation from anybody else. Lastly, I think we've created sustainable and robust operational processes that help us to maximize these capabilities, and for us customer success is the key. We want to ensure that in none of our implementations where we have participated, customer ever sees the need to question why they came to Clover and why they came to Oracle.

Lastly, what are your road maps for the next 12 to 18 months along with Oracle?

Our engagement is getting much deeper. We're engaging now on very large projects. This is not only happening in India but also across the regions, across the Middle East, in the US. And I think that Oracle's capability is now really being leveraged to the fullest. So, I see our Oracle practice, which has been significantly growing rapidly and I think where we are going to be differentiating ourselves is in terms of the kind of work we do, not only in terms of just size but also in terms of complexity.