What's really driving your ICT environment?

Whoever said doing business was an easy thing. It's an area ridden with challenges that involve cost-management, hiring people with the right skill-sets and many more.

In order to meet the ever-increasing demands of customers, employees and business partners, enterprises have to be abreast with latest trends when it comes to technology.

IT consumerisation is forever on the rise and businesses have to surmount a number of challenges in an increasingly complex space. It therefore becomes imperative for them to manage their Information and Communication Technology (ICT) environment in an innovative and cost-efficient manner.

To speak on the issue of how businesses should handle these ICT-related challenges, five IT decision-makers will converge in Mumbai's Four Seasons Hotel on 7th August, 2013, 9.00 am onwards. The event is being organised by SAP.

Here's a quick look at the panelists who will be present at the event:

Venkatesh Babu S: Venkatesh heads the Management Information Systems (MIS) at Café Coffee Day. He has over 18 years experience in technology, reporting and business analytics.

His expertise extends to implementation of enterprise resource planning, points of sales and business intelligence.

Manish Bahl: Manish is vice-president and country manager for Forrester in India. His role is that of an enabler of business outcomes through technology. He provides guidance to clients in the areas of emerging technologies, architecture and technology strategy, IT investment and many more.

He helps clients grow from an IT-centric role in their organizations to a business-embedded one.

Yagnesh Parikh: Yagnesh is Chief Technology Officer for the securities arm of the ICICI Group. Some of the applications that he oversees include mobile trading, account opening and tracking system, the core trading platform and Customer Relationship Management.

Among the several IT projects that he has led at ICICI is the brokerage platform that caters to over 2 million customers of ICICIdirect.com.

Raghupathi CN: Raghupathi is the head of the India business unit at Infosys. He is responsible for strategy formulation, sales, delivery, innovation and total profit and loss management in his area.

He also chairs various Business Information System groups working on establishment of ICT standards in the power sector.

Mihir Karkare: Mihir co-founded the social media agency Social Wavelength in 2009. It is now considered one of India's leading social media agencies.

The company's vice-president, Mihir has been an early adopter of social media technologies and knows their impact on big businesses. Social Wavelength now has a presence in four Indian cities.