Prahlad Koti, Partner at Netcompany
"We believe that implementing a diverse range of small, rapid, scalable projects driven by practitioners is the right way to get real benefits from technology."
As society emerges from years of pandemic, IT finds itself ever more central to our personal and working lives, and IT professionals have never been more crucial to the functioning of businesses and society.
The UK IT Industry Awards are designed to celebrate and promote the organisations, teams, projects, technologies and individuals who have given so much, and those who continue to help shape the future of IT, our industry and digital society.
This year's winners will be announced at a live awards ceremony on Wednesday 9th November in London.
One of the finalists is Netcompany, which has reached the shortlist for two categories: Best Healthcare Sector IT Project of the Year and Emerging Technology of the Year.
We caught up with Prahlad Koti, Partner at Netcompany, to find out what makes his company different from other technology firms.
Prahlad Koti is responsible for driving digital innovation across the UK healthcare sector. He works with customers to achieve true business transformation by adopting world-leading IT solutions. Before joining Netcompany, Prahlad led digital transformation business units and delivered outstanding customer outcomes.
Computing: Please provide some background on your company for our readers
Prahlad Koti: Netcompany is one of Europe's fastest growing and most successful IT services companies, leading the way in showing how digital transformation can create strong, sustainable societies, successful companies and better lives for us all. With 6,500 colleagues worldwide and over 500 in the UK, the business is growing rapidly off the back of strong performance with clients like the NHS and the MoD in the public sector, and blue-chip private sector clients in the energy, defence, transportation and logistics sectors. Netcompany gained notice in the UK during the pandemic for the successful deployment of the Covid-19 passport apps in England and Scotland.
What makes you different from other technology companies?
Netcompany has paved the way by deploying many successful public and private digital innovation projects across Europe, using our unique Composable Enterprise Framework approach. We have developed a vast portfolio of high-quality, reusable, specialised and self-contained components and accelerators made with legacy-free technology that can speed up any delivery and modernise tech stacks. They can work as standalone components, on top of commercial solutions or in collaboration with legacy systems.
We believe that implementing a diverse range of small, rapid, scalable projects driven by practitioners is the right way to get real benefits from technology. Innovation by targeted, evolutionary steps can create sustainable benefits without disrupting existing processes or calling for major amendments to legacy IT systems.
What one company achievement in the last 12 months are you most proud of?
In the UK, we successfully delivered the Covid pass for England, Scotland and the Crown Dependencies. This was a key component in enabling the re-opening of society safely during the tail end of the pandemic. More than 30 million people have made use of Covid pass, and 250 million Covid passes have been issued thus far, proving it was a complex technical challenge in a rapidly evolving landscape. We did not just deliver this to people who are digitally savvy, but those from all walks of life, with all digital abilities.
In the wider UK healthcare landscape, we are working on a number of other projects, including maintenance of the contact tracing solution, helping the NHS digitise the patient journey when registering for a new GP and improving NHS data quality.
What are you working on this year?
Now that we are coming out of the pandemic, we have a situation where NHS waiting lists are skyrocketing. The capacity is not keeping up with demand, so we are looking at digital solutions to alleviate this problem.
Virtual wards take pressure off hospital beds, reduce staff infection risk and save money. This is a safe way to treat more people, cost-effectively, while making sure patients receive the best medical attention. This solution creates equality in healthcare, because strong patients who can and want to be at home can choose to do so, while weaker patients who need hospital care have more attention from their medical teams. As such, it's a great example of both recovering clinical capacity and reassigning tasks to patients.
Why are events like the UK IT Industry Awards important to the IT industry?
We are in a situation where every walk of business life is enabled by digital and IT. It is important for all technology providers to strive for excellence and celebrate successes. BCS helps provide the platform for exchanging of ideas so that as an industry we can always become better and more impactful to business and society as a whole.
The UK IT Industry Awards will take place on 9th November in London. Click here to view the shortlist and here to book your table.
