The phrase -“The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turnout the product.”- by Peter Drucker holds true for the exceptional individual with whom we got a chance to converse. With knowledge shining bright in the eyes and sophistication in the behaviour, humbleness in talk, positive attitude & focused approach some of the qualities that stand out after one has spoken with Mr. Ashish Mehta, an gentleman extraordinaire. He has excelled in the field of technology and people often refer him as an excellent SAP consultant. Due to his amazing ability to handle the extreme breadth of scope in any project while maintaining a very high quality of knowledge in order to deliver to that scope. He is quick to understand business needs and consistently suggests effective solutions to problems. His “can do” attitude and consistent focus on meeting deliverables with quality solutions make him invaluable. He strongly believes in MBWA (Management By Walking Around) and follows the same concept at his work and that makes him a terrific mentor too. His Core speciality is managing Enterprise Applications. He has an elevated mind and grounded approach which differentiates him from his contemporaries.
He passed out from IIPM, New Delhi in the year 1998 and post that did a certificate programme in project Management from University of California, Berkeley. His first venture was at Intellicon, Delhi and a call from the U.S from SAP was a turning point in his career path. During this time he managed large teams, large budgets, multi-partner engagements, and worked across multiple regions spanning North America, Europe and Asia. Apart from the client engagements, he has been actively involved in internal projects, practice development and knowledge sharing with the CRM community.
He skillfully managed application implementations; upgrade assessments, solution demos, and solution proposals at various SAP customers like, NetApp, McKesson, Honeywell, Lenovo, SanDisk, LAM Research, Colgate Palmolive, and others. Another one of his interesting assignment happened to be at Hudson Highland Group where he bagged the biggest jump in sales in entire the US, and was given the President’s award for his achievement and from thereon he joined Dolby Laboratories Inc. The horizon has always been broad for Mr. Mehta; he has also been very enthusiastic at cultural forums as he was a cultural secretary at IIPM. He also took out his valuable time and made it for IIPM alumni Meet, 2011, where he met his fellow batch mates and admired professors. Both Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri & Prof. Rajita Chaudhuri were excited to see him back at campus. Mr. Mehta’s quest for excellence has no boundaries and his talent mix makes him an outgoing & fun to be with person. Had he not been working as an IT Professional, he would have been flying airplanes as a professional pilot.
Excerpts from the Interaction:
Q. It is good to know that you have worked with so many prestigious brands…..what has been the most interesting part of your career journey. If you could just share with your first venture onwards……
A. The most interesting part of my journey is the journey itself. I have had the opportunity to work in different industries, in different roles, in different geographies, which makes the journey challenging but exciting. I started my journey with Intellicon, Delhi, working in cutting edge technology of Automatic Data Identification and Capturing as a Solution Sales Executive. The fun part was to work in a generally unchartered industry and work with Executives to form industry specific solutions helping organizations to utilize the technology. In my next challenge I worked with FCS Ltd., Noida, heading their Strategic IT Planning department which required me to keep ahead of the technology trends in USA which enabled us to predict the skills required in the US IT industry.
I relocated to US in 2001 to continue with the organization and within a year got an opportunity to work with a start-up in a similar role. I continued to look for new challenges and the next one came about with Hudson Highland Group, a recent spin-off of Monster Worldwide, the parent company of monster. com. I managed the US West coast sales and operations for IT Professional Services group of Hudson. I went on to bag the biggest jump in sales in entire US and was given the President’s award for my achievement.
That obviously did not deter me in my quest for new challenges. I then decided to bring my technology grasp to the forefront and switching industries by learning about SAP. But that is not enough, after 5 years of successful and rewarding career with SAP, I have recently taken on another challenge to manage SAP implementation and projects for Dolby Laboratories, Inc. in San Francisco, CA, the organization that pioneered sound engineering technologies like Dolby Digital.
Q. How were your college days… tell us the fun part along with academics…
A. My stint at IIPM has been one of the best periods of my life. It was a good mix of learning and fun. I made life-long lasting friendships and learned from the best any B School could offer. I still remember Arindam’s feisty lectures taking on the challenges of our economy using real life examples. I remember he used the example of a cow sitting on the middle of a road to depict the behavior of Indian Government.
I was the cultural secretary of IIPM and one of the events that I organized that will always be close to my heart was the Festival of Brands at India International Trade Fair. That one event gave me experience in leadership, management, organizing, sales, marketing and branding.
Q. How are classrooms different from workstations?
A. Classrooms are a platform that one can use to hone on one’s creativity and imagination, some of the skills that you cannot always use in workstations, since the most important focus there is to get the task at hand completed. There are some organizations like Google which are changing this trend and allowing employees to use some 20% of their productive time to do creative things that are away from their daily jobs.
Q. What factors do you attribute your success to?
A. Recognizing an opportunity when it presents itself and utilizing that to chart a path forward. Never hesitating to take calculated risks envisioning the long term yields rather than short term woe.
Q. What has been your most memorable moment in your career so far?
A. I will always cherish the moment when I got an offer to work at SAP America, which was also a turning point in my career.
Q. Who has been one of the greatest inspirations in your life?
A. My Mother
Q. What, according to you, are the values which influence the leadership process?
A. The values that influence the leadership process according to me are Honesty, Integrity and Empathy.
Q. What are the opportunities and threats specific to your industry?
A. I have mostly been involved with the High Tech industry in my career and I believe one of the biggest opportunity which still has a lot of potential is mobile software. With smart phones and mobile OS evolving at a rapid pace, there is tremendous opportunity for the mobile software developers to build software utilizing the proximity of the ever so omnipresent mobile devices. Some bigger players have already started releasing software for mobile retail payment solution which would allow consumers to pay for products just by waving their mobile phones in front of a reader at any retail store. This has potential to replace the use of physical credit cards completely.
A threat to the industry though is for organizations to invest in developing mobile software without realizing the willingness or pace of end users to adopt these solutions and the compatibility of the devices using these solutions.
NOT JUST INDIA BUT DEVELOPED COUNTRIES LIKE USA ARE REALIZING THE IMPORTANCE OF GLOBAL EXPOSURE.
Q. Education has seen a major shift in terms of practical knowledge, case studies, role plays, presentations and today Global Exposure is also one of most important dimension in judging a candidate. Your views please.
A. Not just India but developed countries like USA are also realizing the importance of global exposure. As also explained by Thomas Friedman in his best seller “The World is Flat” all world economies are getting increasingly inter dependent. For fresh graduates to be competing in a global playground, it becomes important for the management school to provide ample ammunition for them to be successful in a Global economy.
Q. Your word of advice for young brigade of professionals?
A. Work hard, party hard but be sane and sensible.
Q. If not here, where would you have been?
A. Flying an airplane as a professional pilot. I still plan on doing that although not professionally
Q. When not working, how do you spend time with your family?
A. I like spending time with my family outdoors. Being closer to nature recharges us as a unit.
USE 20% OF YOUR PRODUCTIVE TIME DOING CREATIVE THINGS THAT ARE AWAY FROM DAILY JOB…
Q. Your views on Global Exposure- Its importance & Implementation .
A. Today, everyone is competing in a global environment. Almost all of us, especially the ones working in IT organizations, have some experience working in virtual team where members are contributing and collaborating from all over the world. Corporations are realizing the value of physical presence in emerging markets to become attuned with the culture and requirements of their workforce and customers. It really helps one entering the corporate environment to have Global exposure which prepares for interactions with global teams.
The best way of getting global exposure is… well, getting physically subjected to world cultures and work environment. It is quite a norm to have internet buddies from all across the world and chat with them frequently to understand each other’s culture. In the western world, there are global student exchange programs which invite students to travel to different countries and live with families that provide boarding to the global exchange students.
I believe IIPM, with its GOTA program, provides a tremendous opportunity to students to make them aware and better prepared to work in a global setting. Just by interacting with foreign students and faculty, it gives students immense confidence to be successful in their career which most probably would cross global boundaries.
Q. What do you think is the importance of Corporate Grooming in the Professional world.
A. Silicon Valley, where I live, has been the place where great companies were created by simple but extremely intelligent people. This land in California does not pay much heed to corporate grooming necessities. CEOs, CIOs are quite often seen wearing casual clothes. Biggest examples are Mark Zuckerberg, known for his hoodies and Steve Jobs, for his black turtleneck and jeans.
The situation changes upon moving towards the east coast of America, the home of Wall Street and Financial hub of USA. Here, corporate employees are sharply dressed and pay lot of heed to their clothes and corporate behavior.
I believe an essential level of corporate grooming is required, irrespective of the industry one works in. It is important to comprehend the behavior which mandates respect from colleagues. There is a basic level of corporate grooming that is applicable to everyone. Simple things like not smelling of the food that you just ate, not speaking in your native language unless everyone around you speaks the same, and coming to meetings on time, does not depend on the industry or geography that you work in.
Some of the other pointers which I feel are important are – not wearing sandals or floaters to work, always tucking your shirt in, not spraying too much of deodorant, not wearing a tie with a shirt with checks, making sure your trouser length is enough to hide your socks while standing, not talking loud on the phone unless you are in a conference room, not disconnecting without leaving a voice message, etc.
Q. Please tell us with your Leadership Style.
A. I believe in leading by example. As a leader one has to create a need to achieve a common goal by inspiring the team. I have always experienced that the employee productivity is always greater when they are self-motivated instead of being pushed towards a goal. I abide by the following as key to making sure my teams achieve their goals
Clear Focus and Direction: Every member of the team should be working towards a common goal. Unless that goal is clearly defined, the team members would not have focus and would tend to digress from the goal.
Clearly Defined methods and tools of achieving the goal: Even though the team understands the direction they need to take, they would not be able to achieve the end result if they are not following the right path.
Achievable target: I never think if I push the team harder, they would go farther. It might work a few times but it tends to burn out the team. Everyone should have a target they agree that they can achieve. I involve all my team members in setting their targets.
Pertinent rewards: We all work hard to prove our worth. But going over and beyond one’s duty should always be a criteria for rewards. These rewards result in additional motivation and inspires the fellow team members to strive to achieve more than expected of them.
I do also believe in MB WA (Management By Walking Around). This might not be possible when I am managing virtual team but works really well when I am in physical proximity to my teams. This gives the team members a chance to interact and communicate at a level ground which does wonders for their motivation.
Q. Customer Relationship Management has evolved with technology. Please elucidate in context of your experience.
A. Customer Relationship Management has really evolved with the advent of Internet and Social Media. Now organizations can be closer to their customers and respond in real time to their needs. There are several companies taking advantage of the direct connection with their customers in Sales, Marketing and Service organizations using Social Media. Brand owners now pay celebrities to tweet about their products as a marketing strategy, many airlines monitor their Facebook page and tweets mentioning them to respond to customer qualms.
With Facebook having more than 800 million users, this becomes a great platform of organizations to market their products to a targeted audience. It is also getting easier for brand owners to get instant feedback and measure the results of a campaign using internet and social media.
CRM application software development organizations have understood these needs and are integrating their software with social media portals. During my stint with SAP America, this was a major investment in building the next generation of CRM products. In the most recent version, a Customer Service Representative could get the stream of twitter feeds which had a mention of their organization within the application. Not just SAP, but this is a prime focus of all other CRM application software organizations like Salesforce, RightNow Technologies, etc.
