The launch of MiHCM Consulting in January 2026 heralded a new era for global HR technology provider MiHCM, with the new practice designed to deliver end-to-end HR transformation, change management, and advisory services for organisations across South Asia and Southeast Asia.
It also expands MiHCM’s regional footprint beyond technology into strategic advisory and execution and positions MiHCM as a regional HR transformation leader, combining deep HR expertise with digital HR, Work Tech, analytics, AI-driven insights and AI agents.
In this episode of ‘MiHCM Leadership Lens,’ we speak to Head of Consulting for South Asia, Vindya Cumaratunga, who unpacks the future of HR transformation.
Vindya is a strategic HR professional with three decades of experience and has worked at top corporates in Sri Lanka during her stellar career, including John Keells, Virtusa, Millennium IT Software, LSEG Technology, and Senok Group of Companies, where she was Director – HR prior to joining MiHCM Consulting.
An HR practitioner with a strong business focus and proven capability to strategise and deliver HR projects aligned with business goals, Vindya has held multiple senior roles and is recognised for her ability to harness global HR best practices to shape teams and drive corporate success across organisations, domains, and generations.
Here, she shares her insights on the evolving role of HR, the rise of AI-powered workforce intelligence, and the strategic transformation required for organisations to thrive in the future of work.
Watch the interview here
Recognising the opportunity for strategic HR transformation
MiHCM recently launched MiHCM Consulting. What prompted the decision to introduce a dedicated consulting arm at this stage?
In one word, it’s the opportunity. The demand for strategic HR decision support is skyrocketing. Companies are investing in technology and working on software implementation, but the real question is, do they see the strategic value in these technological advancements?
The gap is not in technology or software systems. The gap is in the alignment between people, strategy, process design, and, most importantly, digital capability. Have we really understood that?
If you take the Western world, especially in terms of the tech companies and some multinationals, this journey has already started. Here, companies started automating their systems a couple of decades back, but have they really optimised? That is the question before us.
We saw this as an opportunity and thought it was the right time to kick off our consulting practice and take it forward because we’re backed by one of the best products in the market – the MiHCM HR system.
Moving beyond traditional HR consulting
How does this consulting practice differ from traditional HR consulting?
Traditional HR consulting often stops at recommendations, but we go beyond that. We combine people strategy, process design, and technology architecture into an integrated model. With our strong technology backing, our consulting practice centres on data-driven and more execution-focused areas.
In simple terms, we are not here to simply advise. We want to take the entire transformation journey; we help our customers design, implement, and deliver measurable transformation.
Bringing practitioner experience to HR transformation
You’ve implemented our system before at one of the corporates you worked at, so you have extensive experience in guiding that, along with your HR experience. So, you bring all of that to the table?
Precisely. I bring experience not only with the MiHCM system, but also with several global HR systems. Having been part of implementation teams in large corporates, I understand both the technology perspective and the operational HR challenges organisations face. That combination of experience helps us guide organisations more effectively through transformation.
Elevating HR to the boardroom
How does MiHCM Consulting elevate HR to the board level?
When HR focuses on administrative tasks, it becomes very operational, but the expectation from the board is different. The board expects HR to bring analytics, help it with data-driven decision-making, focus on people growth, and support business growth as well. When HR teams are too busy with operational work, they cannot really deliver on those strategic aspects that businesses expect.
With MiHCM Consulting, we’re trying to build that strategic HR so that the whole mindset of the leadership shifts to a different area, with HR ready to support in terms of what the business exactly wants, contributing to revenue growth, and making sure that people are aligned with the business strategy.
That’s where our consulting practice comes in. We work with HR teams and make sure that they deliver strategic business partnering. That’s a very strong term and that’s how modern HR should work, not as a backend/operational type of HR.
Overcoming complacency in HR transformation
From what you’re saying and from what we’re seeing, HR is clearly changing. It’s more about strategy, about having a say in board decisions, and so on. What are the most common challenges that HR is facing today in modernising itself?
There are a lot of things that we can talk about. People can say it’s resistance to change or things like that. I feel that it’s complacency. We’re in our comfort zone.
The CEO talks about it, but he doesn’t want to do anything. Then the next level talks about it – technology upgrades, being on par with everyone else, staying ahead of the game and so on – but then they take a step back and see that they have a very comfortable journey, they are in their comfort zone, so they take a step back. They don’t really pay enough attention to what they have been doing with their business all this time.
Just because you have been progressing for 20 years, that doesn’t mean that that knowledge, that practice, or that process will be relevant to the next 20 years. You need to change. There should be a shift in mindset, and you should be ready to change.
If you treat your environment as your comfort zone and you become complacent, that’s a huge challenge. That’s not just seen at the bottom level, but even at the top level – that attitude of ‘oh, things have been well for us, why are we changing?’ That’s the question, always. It’s important to take a step back, analyse the situation, and make sure that you’re ready to take the next leap.
The role of AI and HR technology in transformation
In taking this leap, how do MiHCM’s products – such as MiHCM Enterprise, MiA ONE, and Syntra – support this transformation journey?
Enterprise is our main platform. MiA ONE, Syntra, and SmartAssist are AI products. I am proud of the MiHCM Consulting practice, because we are backed by one of the best systems that gives support unlike any other product.
SmartAssist is the product that supports HR administration. HR takes a lot of time on transactional work, like drafting letters, contracts, JDs, and so on. SmartAssist helps people in HR administration teams do this work in a few seconds with one or two prompts. That’s a big advantage, because then HR will have enough time to do more strategic work.
If I’m to talk about MiA ONE, it is the total employee experience. I think it’s one of the best products I’m seeing in the market out there today. I’m sure all of us have had the experience of sending a mail to HR, going to ‘reach HR,’ or talking to the help desk, but all these things take time. You create tickets even to get small information.
Sometimes HR will have to validate with different people or go through policies and get the information out. Be it any employee data, it takes time. But with MiA ONE, employees can put in just one or two prompts and get whatever information they want. That’s a big plus that we have.
The other thing is Syntra. Syntra is going to go to every single boardroom, because it helps the C-level, the leadership, the board. The moment they’re in a board meeting, if they want to discuss a certain employee or make a certain decision as a board – maybe it’s the next board member that they want to appoint – Syntra can provide a lot of information with one or two prompts.
If the board wants to understand ‘who are the top performers?’ or ‘do we have succession planning for our leadership roles?’ with Syntra you can click one button and give one prompt and that information comes to your laptop. That is the level at which we are operating. It saves your time and your energy and, most importantly, it gives you the information that you want.
Balancing workforce intelligence with data security
So, we are talking about people, right, from across every level of the organisation, right up to the board and company strategy? Where do data privacy and security fit in with MiHCM in this area?
I think that’s a very timely question, especially with countries all over the world talking about personal data protection. At MiHCM, we take trust, governance, data protection, and data security very seriously.
As a company, we are compliant with GDPR and compliant with the Personal Data Protection Acts of each country in which we operate. We are also ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO 9001 certified. With all these, we have taken data protection, security, and governance very seriously.
In addition, right now we are working on SOC 2 Type 2 compliance and once that is achieved, it will ensure that we have complete control over the protection journey that we want to take.
Shaping the future of work across South Asia
Looking ahead, how do you see MiHCM Consulting shaping the future of work across South Asia?
We spoke about our opportunity. It’s a great opportunity that we have before us right now.
If we focus on South Asia and Southeast Asia, we have great talent. One goal is to ensure that we make South Asia and Southeast Asia a hub for an innovative workforce. We will work with organisations to scale with confidence, to operate with AI-enabled intelligence, and to build agile workforce models. That is very important.
I think that when the workforce models become rigid, it’s not ready for change. That’s one area we want to focus on to make data-driven leadership decisions. MiHCM Consulting aims to build future-ready HR models.
With our future-ready HR models, we want to make sure that they are accessible, that they are practical, and that they are impactful across South Asia and Southeast Asia. We’re building more than systems; we want to make sure that we become the one-stop HR intelligent partner for the organisations that we work with.
