Sigmoid helps build data and analytics competency for digital transformation success

Recognized as one of India’s Best Leaders in Times of Crisis 2021 in the mid-sized category by Great Place to Work® India, Lokesh Anand shares how the data engineering and AI solutions firm, Sigmoid, has grown rapidly despite the pandemic.

1) Sigmoid is one of the fastest growing data and analytics companies in The Americas. What’s driving this growth?

At Sigmoid, all our customer projects have a visible impact on their top line or bottom line. We have been invested in our customer’s challenges and ensured they get the highest ROI on their investments. Secondly, Covid-19 forced businesses to transform digitally and become more data-driven. It also saw increased adoption of cloud and AI/ML technologies. Given our long experience with these technologies, we were in a sweet spot to help them navigate through their technology choices. Lastly and most importantly, I would attribute our growth to our talented team. All our new hires go through training and certification on technology platforms as well as customer-specific business context training so that they are productive from day one. I think a combination of the above three factors has helped us build trust as an outcome-driven partner to some of the world’s leading companies.

2) Companies want to accelerate digital transformation. How are you enabling them to use data and AI to improve its speed and execution?

We are proactively helping our customers to build a data strategy and analytics roadmap aligned to their business outcomes. We are spending time to explain how data and analytics can help accelerate their digital business, efficiency, and customer experience. As an example, we built a robust data foundation for a global oral care brand. It automated the data ingestion from all their sources and delivered near real-time insights into sales trends. Our focus is to deliver the highest ROI to customers in the shortest possible time. To do this, we have created an Agile Framework for Data. Sigmoid builds and automates scalable and reliable data pipelines, empowering enterprises with faster access to quality data and insights. Further, we bring in accelerators that not only ensure timely delivery of projects but also a high success rate. Most AI projects fail not because of poor ML models but low data quality. We are enabling companies to operationalize AI platforms to enable reusability, scalability and speed up AI adoption and growth.

3) How is Sigmoid helping companies create business value with data and analytics?

At Sigmoid, we have helped more than 25 global Fortune 500 companies with next-gen data engineering and advanced analytics solutions that have had hundreds of millions of dollars in business impact. We are helping customers embed data and analytics into their business strategy. As organizations become data-driven, the demand for data management and technologies such as AI/ML to decipher personalized and relevant insights from large volumes of data is increasing. Sigmoid specializes in building high-quality data pipelines, modernizing data infrastructure, MLOps, and building advanced analytics solutions. We help companies organize and manage their data better, extract insights, build predictive systems, and extract the highest ROI from their data investments.

Companies trying to accelerate digital transformation are discovering that working with legacy technology makes it difficult to deal with the volume, variety, and velocity of data that today’s businesses demand. We help enterprises adopt cloud or open-source technology to overcome these challenges and cost-effectively manage big data while adding agility and scalability. For example, we delivered 70% cost savings and 60x faster data processing by re-architecting a P&L planning tool on the cloud for a leading Fortune 500 CPG company. In another case, we processed over 30 BN data records annually to help set up the trade surveillance for a top global investment bank and enhance their regulatory compliance.

4) How does Sigmoid help companies in building data & analytics capability?

Data has the potential to transform businesses at all levels - strategic, tactical, and operational. The challenge in becoming a data-driven company is to build a setup with the right mix of people, tools, and a data-culture. Building big data solutions requires processes that are different from traditional software engineering which most companies have built over a period of time. Sigmoid brings data engineering processes that help customers overcome their challenges.

Sigmoid’s experienced team of data engineers and data scientists helps bridge the data and analytics skill gaps for businesses. We collaboratively work with customers’ subject matter experts and embed ourselves in their teams to help them move up the data analytics maturity curve. We invest in creating Data Labs for our customers which act as the Center of Excellence delivering multiple business projects. For example, our Data Labs have delivered business value by solving multiple use cases ranging from demand planning to marketing mix modeling, and digital spend analysis, among others, for Fortune 500 CPG companies. Further, Sigmoid has a white-box approach to building data solutions. The technologies used and the processes are completely transparent to our customers.

5) How has Covid-19 pandemic impacted your business?

At Sigmoid, the health and well-being of our employees is job zero. So when the pandemic happened we first ensured that everyone and their families were safe and secure. It caused some short-term disruptions but we used it as an opportunity to scale up our technology infrastructure and collaboration platforms. This has helped us not only be more efficient but has also helped us in sourcing a diverse talent pool. The real benefit comes from thinking of people as being one common talent cloud.

On the business front, globally Covid-19 has accelerated the adoption of cloud, data analytics, and machine learning as enterprises looked to be more efficient and agile. We saw large enterprises ramp up their digital and data-driven initiatives. This has helped us also grow manifold in the last few years.

6) The demand environment is robust, but IT companies have a major attrition issue. How are you attracting and retaining talent?

As I said earlier, our talent has been a major reason for our exponential growth in the past few years. Sigmoid offers a high-growth environment to data and analytics professionals. At Sigmoid, the winning edge is about empowering talent with futuristic capabilities and an ‘employee-first’ workplace. We provide the right mix of challenging projects, technology exposure, and learning opportunities. The opportunity to work with the most competent data professionals who have graduated from premium institutes fosters peer-to-peer learning. Focus on continuous learning is one of our core values. We enable this through Takshashila, our in-house learning academy that offers personalized learning and knowledge-sharing sessions. Our data engineers, data scientists and DevOps engineers work in cohesion to ensure project success, giving them a 360-degree exposure to solving real-world business problems. Thus, in 2-3 years our employees get exposure to solving business problems using data, which might take more than 5-6 years in a traditional company environment. Besides professional development, we also invest in personal wellness of our employees. We also run several wellness programs to help them stay healthy. This is what makes Sigmoid an employer of choice as well as the data engineering and AI partner to the world’s top enterprises.

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