How to Keep Your Customers at the Center of Innovation

On March 23rd, 2020, the Prime Minister of India announced that India would go on lockdown due to COVID. For Aspiring Minds and SHL, it was also the time to make a fresh beginning as one team in the Indian market as we sailed through many subsequent “Janta curfews” together.

Brand mergers and acquisitions go way beyond the terms of the deal – and at the center of this is a pursuit of innovation to advance the suite of solutions for our customers. In order for this to go well, we had to keep our customers at the center of our “why”.

We spoke with some of our customers and colleagues who had first-hand experience in joining the teams and platforms – making the transition to a new beginning during the most difficult months for businesses across the globe.

One of our customers, Hinduja Global Solutions has been a big supporter of this transition. James Job, SVP at HGS says “Aspiring Minds and HGS a global BPM, both aspire for superior customer experience as one of their core values and have now been working with SHL over the past year with the same objectives in place. HGS provides customer experience solutions to top global brands. Since customer experience is directly linked to human connections, onboarding the right people is essential for our business success. Since April 2018, we have leveraged Aspiring Minds’ assessment technology to create a robust system for recruitment. The solution has helped HGS significantly improve our market connect while ensuring a good candidate experience. I believe HGS will continue to excel and innovate with SHL to suit the requirements of the industry.”

Aspiring Minds’ brand merger with SHL was also an opportunity for the product teams to innovate and deliver at a bigger scale. SHL and Aspiring Minds teams worked together to build solutions for the fresh challenges of the new normal workplaces.

SHL and Aspiring Minds teams worked together to build solutions for the fresh challenges of the new normal workplaces.

“From Apr 1, 2020, we started working as a single team delivered over 240 assessments including Coding tests, Skills tests, Language tests, and video interviewing products on Talent Central so that SHL customers can access all SHL and Aspiring Minds assessments and reports from the single admin interface. The expanded team provided us with a wider skill set to create new products and features to gain competitive advantage.” says Vipul Panwar, DGM, Product.

Our combined teams also designed our new SHL Incubation Labs — whose sole objective is to develop new products for our customers at a greater pace! “At the SHL Incubation Labs, we aim to think big and small, set sight on niche improvements opportunities, and embrace disruptive technologies that will satisfy unmet need. Our mission is to be revolutionary and fuel the strategic growth of our customers by pursuing new avenues and a new category of offerings.” said Saurabh Pandey, Senior Vice President, Engineering, and Head of Incubation.

As we continue to work together for bigger aspirations, many positive outcomes have made the past year not only productive but one that helped us realize the strength of a collaborative business environment. No business can do well without a great product, supportive customers, and teams that spot opportunities for growth in unusual conditions.

Learn more about how Aspiring Minds became SHL here.