Mr.Chandar Sundaram, Academic Lead, Microsoft, dropped by at ASB on 6th July 2005 and spent an engrossing hour with the students.He initially briefed the gathering about his work experience in various areas of IT and telecom related business management and then moved over to answering questions posed by the students and the faculty. He endorsed our President’s vision of India turning into a knowledge society and how his role in Microsoft, as Academic Lead is directly related to this. He shed light on Microsoft’s operations in India by explaining about the five business units that are operational in 3 cities (New Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad).
He acknowledged the perennial problem facing IT and entertainment industry, piracy and stressed the importance of spreading awareness among the people against it. One just gets the feeling that some stern action from the government coupled with some innovative solutions from the industry is the need of the hour. Spreading awareness might be the eventual solution but sometimes it makes more sense to go in for short-term solutions. Stricter selection of business partners, dealers and clients might decrease piracy to some extent backed by the IT Act etc.
Network infrastructure administration is one of the major outcomes of integration between IT and telecom verticals. Quizzed about the emerging outcome of this same integration Mr. Sundaram responded by saying that CRM, maintaining the billing records, customer database management and data mining to know customer trends could be a few emerging areas.
One very interesting point that he made in this regard was that many companies that started functioning in these emerging areas could not sustain their business when faced with stiff competition or dynamic business requirements in the due course of time. This immediately brings to mind the importance of having a strong business plan with special importance given for the way in which profits can be sustained in the long run.
Asked about the emergence of Wi-max technology becoming a reality in India, he was quick to point out that it would depend a lot on factors like derived demand and sale of laptops and other mobile computing devices and also on the lifestyle of Indians. This stresses the importance of the fact that technology should always assist or improve life rather than just awe us. It is the value that the customer gets out of a product that is more important than the product features.
Mr. Sundaram gave some news of cheer to students of non-engineering background when he suggested a wide variety of avenues like business planning, product marketing, marketing communication, evaluation of business proposals and plans and back end activities that will help the front end or sales people in the IT companies. Again, one cant help feeling pessimistic as Indian or multinational IT companies are known for recruiting people with tech backgrounds for even the above mentioned job profiles.
He cautioned the gathering about the BPO industry by saying that technology could have a great role in the future of this industry or rather service. The euphoric feeling we have when we talk about our skilled English speaking low cost work force is misled, as we could make out of his talk. He talked of US companies being not happy with the quality of work that some Indian BPO firms have done. He mentioned that in 5 years time China could be the outsourcing hub of the world.
The Microsoft Academic Lead was at his brilliant best when he talked about the “soft” issues of management. He stressed the importance of being aware of cross-cultural factors by citing examples from his corporate life. According to him, our educational system, which churns our some of the best engineers and IT pros, lacks the ability to instill the spirit of innovation and creativity. Again we are reminded of the lesson in strategic management. Innovate. He was of the opinion that time management, stress management, culling the right information, sustaining relationships and networking skills are the most important qualities that an aspiring manager should posses in today’s dynamic business environment.
Contributed by
Jeff Antony, 2nd Year MBA |
