Interview with Parveen Sharma – Shardul Amarchand

Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co is a full service Indian law firm with offices across the country. Parveen Kumar Sharma, National Director – Information Technology of Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co. spoke about his immediate priorities from a technology perspective. 

He outlined four short-term objectives to focus during the coming year: 

1. Baseline the firm’s requirements for the near future and then align the technology footprint (i.e. a combination of core and evolving technologies) to further enable business for the future. While the business opportunities are significant and changing at a pace faster than ever before, the critical criteria is to make appropriate choices that are not only relevant to the firm’s current environment, but also have scalability and a roadmap in both the near and long term.
2. Explore mobility solutions to facilitate people to work remotely in a secure environment. Considering the business imperatives of the legal services industry, Information security is a top priority for the firm, yet mobile access to key business applications is critical for effective time management and enhanced productivity. Sharma is accordingly evaluating the relevant solutions that can work well with existing technology investments and at the same time, precisely address essential security requirements.

3. The third priority is to build a “core” IT platform to aid smooth functioning of inter-related processes and efficient business workflows. Given that the speed of business and change is projected to continue at an accelerated pace, it is critical to have a robust and flexible IT platform to:

• Cater to the core functionalities with standard and invariable workflow.
• Plan for the provision of various “plug-and play” components to manage the various dynamic requirements.

4. Explore which technology innovations—for example, Digital disruptions, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and robotics—can work for the firm and assess the relevance of the various propositions, keeping in mind the need to address the firm’s business requirements.