Welcome back to the second installment of our Getting to Know You series from Genzeon and CompliancePro Solutions. Accompany us “backstage” as we interview members of both organizations to discover the passionate humans behind the technology.
Our next edition is focused on Prashant Krishnakumar who leads Genzeon’s intelligent automation practice. Prashant boasts over 20 years as a technology leader, 18 of those years he spent in the healthcare industry.
Let’s get to know Prashant with some highlights from our interview.
Would you share with us an interesting tidbit about yourself?
My son has been learning chess, and I've been playing five to six games every day. So that is one personal tidbit that I indulged in during the colder months. Another tidbit is that my son and I share the same birthday.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was younger, I wanted to be an archaeologist. To this day, I'm still a history buff, and I still read a ton about archaeology. I find so many aspects of it fascinating: the LIDAR technology, how they're mapping the Amazon, what they're discovering, etc.. That still fascinates me to a great degree.
Where did you grow up, and where do you live now?
I grew up in Bombay, or Mumbai, as it's now known—which is the financial capital of India. I got my education in India and then spent a few working years there.
Since 2004, though, I've been in the U.S., working and continuing my education. I was living in Connecticut while getting my MBA, focused on healthcare. Now my family and I live in Atlanta, GA.
"One of my goals when deciding to come to Genzeon was to gain that whole industry perspective."
What made you decide to come to Genzeon?
There were a few things, so it is easier if I start with my background.
I began my career with a startup and stayed there for about eight months. Ever since that, I've worked for large companies. The last company I worked for was a Fortune 100 company.
Working for bigger companies has its pros and cons. It lets you see how they function operationally. In larger organizations you're siloed to a great degree—it’s very focused. You don't get that end-to-end view most of the time. One of my goals when deciding to come to Genzeon was to gain that whole industry perspective.
The second thing that stood out to me, and what really appealed to me, is how grounded everybody is at Genzeon. The entire leadership style is about enabling teams, driving outcomes, and the servant leadership mentality, which I liked to see.
Where do you see intelligent automation solving real-world problems?
I’ll take another step back and give a quick history tour before I answer that question.
If you look at the industrial age, how it began—manufacturing really brought in the industrial age. Traditionally everything was done by humans. And slowly humans were replaced with machines.
I think a similar thing is happening now in traditional industries, like insurance, healthcare, or finance. The repeatable work that has been done by humans is being automated through different technologies. These technologies span from simple rule-based tasks to more complex, cognitive tasks.
Robotic automation and machine-learning automation use different tools. Simple rule-based tasks use robotics and complex cognitive tasks use machine-learning. But the goal is the same: to reduce and replace the human touch point, specifically the repetitive work, so employees can start doing higher-order work.
There’s a fundamental shift happening in the industry—more and more automation will emerge. I think that this market is going to see exponential growth in the next four to five years.
It's a very exciting space to be in because not only are companies adopting automation, but technology is changing by the day.
"Upskilling is an industry of its own right now. Most organizations are going through this particular challenge now."
What do you foresee as one of the most interesting trends in the future?
There are two trends that I see growing in the near future: labor arbitrage and upskilling. But let me dive a little deeper into both of these.
Labor arbitrage and reduction of costs are two of the primary tools used for transformation. Automation arbitrage is basically where a digital worker does the same work as a human … doing repetitive work, like simple claims processing in banking. That's where humans will be replaced by digital workers—it’s really automation arbitrage because it reduces cost.
For example, if you look at a claims processor, the cost of that employee might be between $7 to $25, based on the worker’s geographic location. When you bring in a digital worker, the cost could be $2. So automation arbitrage comes into play as digital workers become more prevalent.
The other big trend, upskilling, is the next digital revolution. This revolution really begins as digital workers become increasingly embedded in different industries. The displaced workers don't have the right skill set for this new digital worker environment. Organizations will need more machine-learning engineers, teams who can manage bots. They need people to manage the digital workers.
Those are the new skill sets for new technologies for which people need to upskill. Upskilling is an industry of its own right now. Most organizations are going through this particular challenge now.
How will intelligent automation alter and enhance how people can use analytics?
The digital revolution is based on data. With the cloud, consuming and processing large data sets has already become easier. To do analytics at scale, you need data, and you need extreme data processing. Along with that, there is a sophistication to machine learning and AI space.
In analytics, you're really looking for those insights to connect the dots, for which machine learning is one of the key pieces. What is changing now is that you're able to process massive amounts of data and connect the dots across the data spectrum. As you connect people, machine learning, or systems of intelligence, you will really start to get insights that you couldn't before. You can now trend out data, like claims patterns to find out when will they peak? Or when do your hospital admissions peak? Overall, that’s a big shift.
If you missed out on the first Getting to Know You edition, you can catch up here: Getting to Know Chris Lyons.
