Bringing you the inaugural edition of the year, which features the most influential tech CEOs to keep an eye on in 2024. We are extremely delighted to release this issue which highlights the success narrative of MegaMind IT Solutions. which is making a mark in the realm of IT under the leadership of Mr Hamza Batterjee. In this read, we have shared the excerpts of the conversation held with him in a virtual meet. Let’s dive into a fantastic exploration:
These tech enabled processes drive the bottom line to fare better for all three types of digital transformations that we implemented: building new heath digital functions, strategically transforming the core functions in patient care with digital tech and updating the core health tech to ensure future competitiveness. The impact of our digital transformation is felt across all sectors of health care, enabling access to care, enhance quality, and reduce the cost of care.
The inception of AI, Big data and Robotics are creating a huge impact on our healthcare customers and are providing numerous potential benefits for individuals and health sector alike. Our innovative technology and solutions have enabled us to be the distinguished partner to some of the most prestigious names in the IT and Healthcare technology industry:
For Megamind IT Solutions growth in the healthcare services and technology vertical has been material, as players are bringing technology-enabled services to help improve patient care and boost efficiency. Healthcare services and technology serve nearly all segments of the healthcare ecosystem.
Intrigued by this investment, multiple new models, players, and approaches emerging across various sub-segments of the technology and services space, driving both innovation and integration. In some sub-segments, such as data and analytics, utilization management, provider enablement, network management, and clinical information systems, there has been a high rate of both innovation and integration.
For instance, in the data and analytics sub-segment, areas such as behavioral health and social determinants of health have driven innovation, while payer and provider investment in at-scale data and analytics platforms has driven deeper integration with existing core platforms. Other sub-segments, such as patient engagement and population health management, have exhibited high innovation but lower integration.
We saw the opportunity to integrate innovative new technologies and offerings to transform and modernize existing health-business models. We were able to explore the special significance in the evolving role of technology in the health sector with:
• How digital tools can help improve well-being and support holistic-health needs
• What technologists and healthcare players more broadly can do to capture more value from digital health
• How it could help health tech companies build new business or reinvent themselves
• What technologies could lie ahead for digital interventionists and healthcare innovators
Although many digital health products and services feature cutting-edge technology, innovative technology alone does not ensure success. The starting point is to identify an unmet need of a stakeholder within the healthcare system. Effective digital health solutions must be carefully designed for end users—patients, caregivers, healthcare providers, and payers.
We recognized early on that Digital health is the future and will continue to play an increasingly critical role in improving healthcare. Digital health value pools provide a significant opportunity to capture value.
MegaMind IT Solutions, known for its extensive involvement in digital projects with over 40 government and private healthcare institutions in Saudi Arabia, is at the forefront of driving digital innovation in healthcare across the Middle East. The collaboration with Waycen is a testament to MegaMind’s vision of integrating advanced technologies to improve healthcare outcomes and patient satisfaction. By incorporating Waycen’s AI solutions into their network of hospitals, MegaMind is setting a new standard for medical diagnostics and patient care in the region. This strategic partnership not only highlights the potential of AI in revolutionizing healthcare but also showcases the commitment of both Waycen and MegaMind to lead this transformation.
Business Connect: Please do enlighten us on how you built such an apt team.
Mr Hamza Batterjee: We began with the question “Where is the acceleration?” To cite an example Football not as a sport, but as a business, stands unlike any other. The money is essential, but the winning formula is about the most important asset: its team. There is no “off-the-shelf” people model for team-based environments, so we started by considering the themes of skill, motivation, and alignment. In technology organization roles may upgrade, and matching people to needs is based on the applicable skills they can deploy, thereby we took the format of “crafts.” Crafts is about continuous learning and growth towards aligning with new technology. For example, a software developer would continue to achieve mastery in their craft, instead of moving into a manager role. We developed a consistent set of overarching competencies and behaviors to leverage for selection, performance management, training, and development. Wheeling in the other people model against these, for example, interviewing for talent selection, and role-specific career mapping. With this we developed factors for achieving performance objectives to align people resources to business needs and ensure they deliver the desired value. We created transparency into the performance of teams and individuals, linking the achievement of key performance indicators (KPIs) and objectives and key results (OKRs) to individual performance reviews and compensation. The balance to the processes was to encourage teams to stretch and learn. Then came the accelerated path of Innovation, speed, customer centricity and productivity that evolved us into a dynamic, “team-based” culture. Our four dimensional, six power pack provided Megamind a clear path to developing and retaining talent, helping advance our mission and sustain impact for the businesses we serve.
Business Connect: How did you deal with the Covid-19 pandemic and its outcomes on the businesses?
Mr Hamza Batterjee’s: During & post COVID, Megamind faced stagnant markets, new challenges, competition, and inflationary and pandemic-related pressures. The firm was unable to determine if this was a transitory problem that would inevitably fade or was it a more fundamental and potentially permanent shift to have the ability to manage the unexpected. In the first months of 2021 and during the entire of 2022, it became increasingly apparent that these problems will be prevalent in the market, particularly affecting the tech industry and causing stress on the healthcare segment, where it primarily operates.
We were particularly challenged about the future of the organization in the short & long term with the following questions:
• Where will customers see value in investing in technology? How can we design our products, services, and experiences to deliver this value?
• What is the fastest way to stabilize, and redesign stretched and, in some cases, broken technology implementation?
• What capabilities will we need to increase Megamind’s innovation and control costs?
• What direction should we give to help healthcare leaders create value?
• How is the new technological landscape affecting the health and care of the people?
• What can we do to attract and retain employees in the shifting technology market?
• How can we set priorities and organize to direct all the above activities?
These questions enabled us to be the integrator, allowing me to play a pivotal role in setting a clear direction, aligning the organization, and managing stakeholders. Over the course of these years since inception Megamind continues to develop a comprehensive set of product and services offering Health Tech solutions in Hospital Information System (HIS), Healthcare mobile application, AI, TeleICU, Teleradiology, Telemedicine, ePharmacy, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Healthcare VR, Healthcare data & Analytics, ePharmacy, Custom Robotics, Cloud computing, Cyber security, and others.
Business Connect: How is your company synchronizing with the latest technological advancements in the market?
Mr Hamza Batterjee’s: “It’s incumbent on the leader to set the direction for the company – to have a plan in the face of uncertainty.” We try to reduce strategic uncertainty by focusing on options with the firmest business cases.
We see a large opportunity and the pressure to change has been building, with businesses worried their organizations are too slow, too siloed, too bogged down in complicated matrix structures, and too bureaucratic. Many leaders feared that their companies were organized for a world that is disappearing— an era of standardization and predictability that’s being overwritten by four big trends: a combination of heightened connectivity, lower transaction costs, unprecedented automation, and shifting demographics.
Megamind’s tech adoption in health care with four interrelated trends that sets as the front runners in the success of our company and will continue to sustain the industry at large.
To meet and exceed the ever-rising bar for technological change, Megamind ascertains how digital transformation drives a true competitive advantage—in addition to achieving successful outcomes for the change effort itself. We ensure that our organizations have in place four essential elements for transformational success—the Passion, the Perseverance, the Patience, and the Pace—that gives a better chance at outsmarting the competition in a time of constant disruption and change.
Business Connect: Please highlight your competitive advantages and tell us why it couldn’t be copied.
Mr Hamza Batterjee: “We are moving in an era of digital tech revolution in healthcare, an era of unprecedented health tech leadership. This will not only disrupt the way we care for health but also in the way we convert health ambition into reality with emerging technologies.”
For Megamind IT Solutions growth in the healthcare services and technology vertical, we are bringing technology-enabled services to help improve patient care and boost efficiency. Our Healthcare technology suite serves nearly all segments of the healthcare ecosystem integrating AI, robotics, data and analytics, utilization management, provider enablement, network management, and clinical information systems.
Megamind being in digital-health segment has best positioned itself: innovation is in our DNA, attracting tech partners, and investing in new design solutions. Our high-quality, sustainable healthcare system and digital platform provide the greatest benefits for patients and healthcare providers, and a return on investment.
Megamind’s R&D into the economic value of digital technologies in healthcare and the subsequent implementation of technologies such as patient self-services, using digital channels rather than direct physician interaction, patient self-management solutions via our Mobile Application have produced benefits to patient & health care providers alike.
Over the years, our work on the ground has confirmed this analysis and Megamind’s successful cases of IT implementation in the most advanced healthcare systems, continues to create greater impact through coordinated joint effort and with the interconnection of digital-health stakeholders through an open innovation platform.
Our patient mobile application enables patients to track, manage, and improve their health, achieve wellness goals, and interact with their health system. It is quite sophisticated technologically, easy to use, and smartly designed, creating a compelling user experience. Health consumers are digitally monitoring their health data, quantifying their health and lifestyle behavior.
Future forward Megamind continues developing innovation platforms, enabling data sharing with payors and digital health, ensuring patient privacy safeguards, keeping abreast with health regulatory changes. Megamind’s focus is investing in tech platforms that enable health systems to offer patients & health providers innovative ways to improve health while avoiding wasting money on ineffective applications, capitalizing on digital-health solutions in which the consortium of tech systems is better than anything that is developed separately. This approach has & will make digital-health innovation the first innovation in healthcare that is not leading to higher cost but to a more efficient and effective health system and Megamind is a pioneer in this field.
Business Connect: What are the methods used from your end to keep your employees motivated? What approaches do you implement to maintain their enthusiasm?
Mr Hamza Batterjee’s: With a twin focus on developing people and managing them well gives us a long-term performance edge. Our motto has clearly been that of transforming human resources into competitive advantage, especially given the technology field that we are in. Most Companies and Leaders agree that investing in people benefits the organization and it is the right thing to do but are less clear on how those efforts relate to the bottom line. We are trying to be more effective at turning human capital into a real competitive advantage.
While investing in people is important, our experience showed that another ingredient is needed to bring out their best and channel their efforts into results and that is, the management practices, systems, and culture within our company. This concept helped us build training programs to workflows, department and team structures, employee communications, norms, culture, and leadership. Being a technology company, we were able to build a culture of bottom-up innovation and collaboration; positive and inclusive work environments; and rewards and advancement opportunities for employees, and on-the-job coaching.
We build a model of an organizational structure and prioritize each element of the metrics. Then also an integrated approach was required to address the organizational shifts and adapt to recent disruptions. We were considerate to set a direction and calibrate our ambition—which is, we developed a clear perspective that is appropriate to our organization. Also, there was a strong emphasis on cultivating talent and on investing in the leadership that will take us forward. We integrated these to match the scale wherein essentially preparing us to adapt to new situations, new challenges, and new opportunities.
We recognized that human capital is not merely a labor input; people are our company’s core asset. We thereby build the theme that our workplace should work for employees, with coaching to help them develop structures for support, and workflows that remove frustrations. Employees on the front lines are given opportunity to their voices and viewpoints, our leaders improve the day-to-day experience for workers at every level with the principle that enhances competitiveness and adaptability in our fast-moving technology landscape.
We adapted policies and systems that spurs positive change and empowered our C-suite executives to articulate the vision and set the example, our managers became the key actors since they lead and set the tone for individual teams, have greater visibility into what’s working, and became the biggest influence on the employee experience. We are not stagnant in our approach and continuously adopt a more people-oriented focus along with a more challenging and empowering organizational culture, improving consistency, resilience, talent retention, employee loyalty, and reputation.
Each person has a unique, living, breathing set of capabilities and those capabilities belong to the individual, and where they are put to work. We have come to understand that our people are the products of geography, family, and education, individual abilities and attributes, their networks, their family obligations, and their societal factors. We are developing programs that stretches their capabilities or represents a match that better utilizes their skills, and this is done with exposure to varied training programs in leadership, talent & skill scaling both in the technical and personal capacities.
While we have a composite workforce that ranges in terms of age group and nationality, we have come to find that most of the conventional wisdom about generational or ethnic differences doesn’t hold true. Work preferences are more similar than different by age or region, wherein our people are less concerned than others about compensation and place more value instead on flexibility, career development, meaningful work, and a good environment.
To motivate them, we have tried to understand our people’s needs over the course of their careers and build their work experience around those. We listen to as many as possible and have used that feedback to create a constant dialogue and involve them in decisions about their work experience. This is also in a way a strategic approach to skill development, where we encourage them to take the next step, and which learning programs will most help them.
Business Connect: Share some words of wisdom that you would like to convey to the aspiring entrepreneurs and the readers of our Magazine.
Mr Hamza Batterjee’s: There is an interesting quote from Andy Grove “Success breeds complacency, complacency breeds failure.” Entrepreneurs must sustain momentum and high performance to avoid complacency and create value. The business world is more akin to Formula One cars on a track full of unexpected turns, multiple surfaces, and unpredictable weather.
As traditional competition will fade in the rearview mirror in the fast-changing business and technology dynamics, emerging competitors will gather their forces, it becomes increasingly difficult to define what winning looks like. The Entrepreneur must be the prime mover of change from letting the organization become complacent and increase their odds.
Enhancing the business field
Entrepreneurs need to spend time listening, learning, and connecting dots while keeping the focus on success. In our case, I spend significant time looking externally – but only at things that would help the business stay competitive. For our health-tech products, I spent an enormous amount of time on understanding what was going on, understanding patient needs, meeting health providers, going to health conferences to get the latest in research, and studying the competition on the ground.
Taking a 360 view
It is essential for Entrepreneurs to be grounded in asking for factual answers to a holistic set of questions pertaining to Strategy, Capital allocation, Cost & Capital, Commercial, the Organization and reputation. Determining factors include valuation stack in peer sectors, high-impact levers, strengthening the competitive advantage in operating geographies, highest potential M&A, Partnership, ROI on Capital expenditure, enhance executive capacity and speed, refresh talent and governance model.
Riding the S-curve
Entrepreneurs should clearly define the next S-curve, consciously or instinctively, understand the need to get others involved in shaping the plan. As strategies are formed, implemented, and reaches fruition, Entrepreneurs need to create a rhythm of change with pulling all the available business levers, and adjusting of their own leadership style.
Futureproofing oneself & the organization
Futureproofing involves actively building talent strength and energizing coaching, performance & change management, and succession planning. This needs to be done for the most value-creating roles—the most important being that of the Entrepreneur itself.
We have seen macroeconomic events, pandemics, international & social conflicts, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and countless other factors that have created challenges and crisis conditions for businesses the world over. Entrepreneur needs to deftly harness & propel the company to new levels of performance.
To achieve positive outcomes, the entrepreneur must recognize that the best time to get prepared for a crisis is never on the day of the crisis. Create a crisis handbook that stresses the leadership protocols, control-rooms, action plans, and communication preparation for crisis.
