da incorrigible SAZEAL

“If you are flexible, it is not at all difficult to move across domains within the industry. Although you should try and do some coherent domain work, because that is a matter of expertise”, exclaimed Ms. Pooja Raheja, who represented the Enterprise Solutions Unit of Infosys. A senior executive in the Sales and Marketing Department of Enterprise Solutions, she has been associated with Infosys for about 7 years now. The objective of the talk was to clarify all the concepts regarding a management job in the IT industry, especially in the area of Package Consulting.

Beginning with the explanation on what Package Application is all about, she went on to explain how Infosys has successfully worked in the arena to be the largest service provider for Automation requirements of the customers. Separate learning groups are designed for different Services, for eg. Enterprise Solution, which works for providing Package Application Solutions has groups for CRM implementation, ERP implementation, etc. In her words, “Our job is to help customer automate their process with these products and to get them the best possible solution as per his requirement.”

She further dispelled all doubts about how ERP consulting differs from package consulting. She helped the audience understand what the industry is about, which was a revelation to many; she helped them cleared the doubts on what the students, who join as managers, are supposed to do. As new recruits, they are not assigned to projects. Instead, they are assigned to groups according to the talents displayed by the young managers. From here, she took a totally exited audience to her own story on how she started her career as a Chemical Engineering student and Sales and Marketing student (from MDI) to rise to be a top executive in the organization with a techno-functional profile, displaying the hordes of opportunities in the IT sector.

After explaining in detail, how the entire process of Package service offering, Package evauation, Package Implementation, Production Support and Package Application is done, she actually took the audience to the Internal web pages of Enterprise Solutions to show how the whole processs is carried out. The students actually got to see the methodology.

When a question was raised as to whether the organization aligns itself to a particular vendor to provide solutions to customers’ problems, pat came the reply, “That’s against the company’s ethics. It is very important to take care that we do not cling to a vendor, as we are supposed to provide best solution to our end user, who is our customer. Although there are some unbiased affiliations, we follow Vendor Agnostism to the core.” She also went on to explain how standard set of rules have to exist, though the service is customized.

Ms. Raheja, a very charismatic person, actually made the heads turn by her oratory skills. With best wishes and a hope to have a sustained long term liaison of Infosys with TAPMI, and having about 140 students as a very supportive audience glued to their seats throught the session, she successfully brought the event to its closure.