Senior Vice President, Professional Services and Operations; Co-Founder, Reflexis (Mar, 2001 to Oct, 2020) Fully involved in the conceptualization, design and development of the Reflexis suite of products. Responsible for all customer facing activities and operations within the company. Professional Services & Customer Service activities Responsible for 10+ million dollars of annual revenue from implementation, support and other professional services Responsible for Customer Success activities to achieve high customer ratings and retention (90-95%); farming revenue from customer base (60% or more of the total company revenue); consistently high rankings in the industry Deployment of multiple Reflexis products and solutions – from requirements gathering to final acceptance and sign off All customer support activities to strict SLAs; performance reviews and value add services to customers Pre-sales support (proposals, RFPs, cost estimates, presentations and demos) Operations responsibilities • Setup and administration of offshore facilities • Budgets and Operations for multiple organization units and global locations • HR policies • Customer contracts, SOWs, invoicing and payments Head of Software Services Business (Aug 1998 – Mar 2001) Under Techlead Corporation (within the Reflexis group of companies), managed software services business of around $ 5 million per annum Onsite and offshore projects involving a variety of software technologies (mainframes, client-servers, web-based) in different verticals including retail, financial services (banking, insurance, plastics processing, etc.) Responsibilities included cost and budgets management; projects estimation, execution and control; customer training and support Responsible for support to global customers in the Caribbean, Europe and the Americas Other responsibilities included Customer/User group management, solution consulting, product roadmap planning based on customer feedback
Narayanamurthy Raghupathy (Raghu)
Co-Founder of Reflexis Systems, now part of Zebra Technologies
Bio
Hi, thanks for stopping by. I have spent more than 4 decades in the international IT arena and have pretty much seen it all - from punched cards for data entry through mainframes and client-server environments to the age of everything-on-demand on the Web using handheld devices. You may call me a kind of dinosaur but one that has managed to adapt, survive and succeed! On a serious note, there are some fundamentals that have never changed and, in fact, become more and more essential to business. Such as customer needs (pain points, if you want to be more in with the lingo); laser focus on customer success; business benefits and ROI; technology being at best a means to an end; and so on. As an entrepreneur I have traversed the full journey from a 5-people startup in a basement to a corporation of 500 employees that routinely features in the top three solution providers to the retail industry, year after year - as determined through annual surveys by Retail Information Systems (risnews.com). During this process, I wore multiple hats, many a time simultaneously, that were focused on Customer Success Management, Product Management, structure, growth and management of a global, multi-cultural workforce (onshore-offshore models included) and several permutations of these and other roles. The journey culminated in the acquisition of Reflexis Systems by Zebra Technologies for more than $ 560 MM (https://www.reflexisinc.com/zebra-technologies-completes-acquisition-of-reflexis-systems-inc/). I have extensive experience in managing marketing opportunities, up-selling to customer base, streamlining and aligning internal processes to meet changing environments (read manual-to-automated, analog-to-digital, in-person-to-virtual) as my company, Reflexis, grew in size and complexity. The challenges of managing a Software Services company is a whole world different from growing a Product company. What works by way of customer focus, say, fulfilling every request for new product features, may not work and, in fact, could be counter productive when you are offering Cloud delivery of your solutions to 200 brands. Then there are endless questions about integrating your software applications with the customer's internal systems. These are the types of nuances that I have had the fortune to handle and resolve successfully. It is this expertise that I am now eager to share with fellow travelers on the entrepreneurial train. There is no greater satisfaction, professionally, than to help others benefit from the lessons you have learnt. Just for the record, I have a Masters in Industrial Engineering from NITIE, a world class institute in Mumbai (India). I have been accorded the Distinguished Alumni award by the School where I did by Bachelor's Degree in Engg. (NIT, Trichy (India)). I am also a PMP (project management) professional. For more details, please check out my resume attached. Better still, let us just grab a cup of coffee and chat!
Expertise
Building a team
Building motivating and retaining a killer team is key to the success of any organization. While building teams for different departments and functions within an organization may seem to involve different skill sets and approaches, there are some common, fundamental traits that distinguish successful teams from the also-rans. Based on my long and in-depth experience in building and leading cross-functional teams for decades, I am happy to share experiences and advice in this regard.
Customer success
Customer Success Management in a sense defines the very existence, viability and growth for the company. If you dont identify and take care of your customers and their needs and do not convincingly and unambiguously bring business benefits and desired ROI with your products/services, everything else you try to do does not add up to much.
Growth marketing
Everyone wants to grow and grow fast, rapidly. Particularly, when you land some early big deals (bigger than what you can handle) you get into the 'everything is green' mindset. Growth, at whatever pace, has to be deliberate, planned and sustainable. I believe in fundamentals - such as fulfilling a need for customer(s), adding high value, being unique and first-amongst-peers, etc. - that enable growth, hacked or otherwise!
Mindset coaching
I am a firm believer of 'get the right people into the company and allow them to figure out what needs to be done'. So, mindset, which I also call the do-what-it-takes approach, is the backbone for successful growth when you are a young company. Pretty much like moulding a child before it becomes an adult with all the biases and idiosyncrasies. I am a very hands-on guy, leading from the front, perpetuating a culture of customer-first and team-above-individual.
Product management
Product Management is a function that grows in size, complexity and importance as your organization grows. While serving your first customer, product management usually consists of fanatically saying 'yes' to everything the customer wants. Making the transition to building and servicing hundreds, even thousands, of customers with a single version of your product, while retaining the same fanatical customer service is a huge challenge that is capable of making or breaking your company.
Productized services
Productized services are superior to services offered on a work-for-hire basis. It benefits both the provider of the service through delivery of a package deal and less headache for the customer with a truly end-to-end service. The company that I co-founded offered a total solution to our customers, be it a simple development project or a customized implementation of one or more of our enterprise software products. Happy to share my experiences and offer guidance in this arena.
Remote work
I was part of the culture of multi-dimensional and multi-location teams working together, long before the current trend of work-from-home took center stage! I have managed remote work (the old lingo was 'off-shore') and faced and solved all types of technical, operational and cultural issues thereof. Happy to offer some pointers to anyone struggling with managing themselves and others working remotely.
Venting frustration
Frustration is an integral part of business life. Emotional roller coasters are a way of life, especially for a startup. Typically, frustration is either external or internal. External frustration could be due to slow speed of customer decision process and similar other factors. Internal factors could be colleagues who drag their feet, poor quality coding and so on. With my vast experience, I am confident I can guide you in your times of stress and distress.
Toolkit
JIRA
15 years of experienceUsed Jira extensively for general issue tracking, product management, implementation projects and customer support. Customer review meetings were centered around one version of the truth (and status) as logged into Jira.
Salesforce
13 years of experienceUsed it as an executive user to keep track of sales leads, sales campaigns, key contacts, sales campaign strategy and progress. Also used this in the context of voluntary work undertaken for the Red Cross.
Industries
Enterprise Software
Co-founder of a software solutions company; SaaS offering; Retail and Financial services focus. Held many positions including Customer Success, Product Management, Professional Services and Overall Operations
Information Technology
Senior executive of an enterprise software solutions company. Held many positions including development, professional services, customer service and support
Customer Service
Full spectrum of customer success management portfolio, from pre-sales to implementation to ongoing account management to portfolio expansion and diversification
Experience
- SaaSB2B
Techlead Corporation was solely in charge of software services offered by Fujitsu-ICL, the leading IT vendor in the Caribbean. Director Projects, the Caribbean (Aug 94 – Jul 98) As the senior executive member from Techlead management, was based at the Caribbean headquarters in Jamaica and was responsible for major software development, implementation and support services to the largest organizations in Retail, Financial Services and the Government in Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and other countries Was responsible for coordination of offshore development teams in India and delivery of services to customers using onsite resources Managed inter-disciplinary project teams consisting of staff from customers (banks and other financial institutions, Government, etc.), Fujitsu and other hardware vendors and Techlead’s own software personnel Was responsible for customer support of all implemented applications Country Manager, UK (Feb, 93 – Jun 94) Joint-owner of the start-up company (Techlead which later evolved to become Reflexis), heading the UK operations. Initiated and built up a customer base. Managed resources and projects and helped build the offshore unit in India. Set up processes and procedures and other infrastructure required for a new company. Personally involved in managing the first few turnkey projects.
B2BOtherCountry/Regional Manager, Europe (UK) (90-93) Based in London, UK and was responsible for all overseas software services business for ICL, India in Europe. Major clients were customers of the parent company ICL, UK – British Gas, London Underground, OXFAM and Marks & Spencer to name a few – as well as ICL, UK’s own internal business units. Was in charge of both the technical and business aspects of all software projects undertaken and grew the business from half a million pounds to well over 3 million in 3 years. Specifically spent a lot of time coordinating with the software headquarters in India in respect of • resources to various clients for onsite work on a time & material basis • management of fixed price software development and support assignments with an optimal mix of onsite and offshore work Manager, Banking Services, India (88-90) Was in charge of a specialist division responsible for all software development and support activities for multi-national banks such as Standard Chartered and ANZ Grindlays as well as the largest banks in India such as State Bank of India and Bank of India. Was awarded the prestigious, ICL Managing Director’s Award for Excellence, given annually to a handful of employees across the world. Area Services Manager, India (83-88) Responsible for all software support activities to a client base of over 50 customers. Activities included the full software development life cycle (SDLC), implementation support, training, documentation and resource management to a spectrum of customers in different verticals operating mainframe, client-server and other hardware/software environments.
B2BOtherSystems Manager in charge of various systems such as financial accounting, distribution and warehouse management, inventory management. Started as an Analyst/Programmer and worked my way up to Systems Manager.
B2BB2COther