Prof. Dr. Konstantin Theile

Director,EGSM
Switzerland

A day with the Founder - Dr Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman NASSCOM & CEO Zensar Technologies

Believe me or not, something unheard is happening at ZCBI. I could feel it right from day one. It kept on growing in volume and intensity with each passing day. It started with the breath of few individuals, soon it turned into the air of Innovation and now it is no longer a mild breeze, it is a strong Wind. Yes! The Wind of Transformation has begun! It is a Wind which both the ZCBIians and the Corporates have felt alike. They have begun to experience it, enjoy it and sail with it.

Call it the first destination or the beginning of a journey, on 10 June 2008, ZCBIians were enriched and enlightened by none other but the founder of this Concept ZCBI, the Mastermind behind this Epitome of Innovation, Dr Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman NASSCOM & CEO, Zensar Technologies.

Fun at heart, follower of intuitions and passionate about enjoying every moment at work, Dr Natarajan believes in listening to his heart. He is a sailor in this sea of life and hates wasting fuel going against the stream. Probably, he is a strong believer of the ‘Law of least Efforts’ which says that you achieve utmost success when you seem to apply the least efforts, the enjoyment in the journey is so extreme that it overwhelms the burden of the efforts!

The Big day started with the celebrations of the first 50 days of ZCBI. ZCBIians presented the journey so far to Dr Natarajan who was highly impressed by the ‘Ehsaas’ Social initiative and the advent of ZCBI into Secondlife, an online Virtual World, as well!

There is something at ZCBI which compels its visitors to follow the Mantra of Success – Doing things differently and Dr Natarajan was no exception. To everyone’s surprise Chairman of NASSCOM started his lecture not by speaking about IT, US, Europe or Asia-Pacific but by speaking about Rural India. He asked us that how many have spent a decent part of their life in small towns of Rural India. To Dr Natarajan’s surprise there were many of us who had absorbed the Purity of Rural India in our childhood. This was something unique we shared with Dr Natarajan, himself coming from a small town of Bihar and an introvert in the early days of his life, we were overwhelmed by his strong connection with his roots.

Dr Natarajan now fired a question at us ‘What is NASSCOM and its purpose of existence’. Multiple answers soared from all corners of the classroom and each covered just some aspects of this huge body. Dr Natarajan explained that the prime purpose of any big coalition is to share and comprehend the best practices with each other and NASSCOM does the same. It is a platform for the IT & BPO Industries to Learn, Share, Enrich and Grow together. He went on to ask the reason behind the success story of Indian IT industry during its early days. There were many answers and someone popped up with the Y2k solution but Dr Natarajan wanted an answer that would appeal to his ‘that sense’ which all of us have in plenty but tend to use it least because we feel it is common, yes indeed it is common but didn’t Abraham Lincoln once said ‘God loves common people, that is why he makes so many of them’. Yes! Dr Natarajan appealed to us to use the immense strength of our common sense and trust the wonders it can create. He went on that during 1980’s a strong trend began when students from IITs and other premium institutions went abroad, particularly to the US for higher studies and work. Strong presence of Indians in US and other foreign countries helped the IT industry to grow exponentially. This is the power of Collaboration and indeed it is much common than solving the mighty Y2k problem!

Dr Natarajan went on to apprise us about the company he currently heads, Zensar Technologies. He said that in order to achieve success it is extremely important to be Original and Differentiate yourself from the crowd. Zensar Technologies differentiates itself from the rest by believing in Constant Innovation, ZCBI being a classical example. Dr Natarajan informed that Zensar Technologies focuses on Process and Business Model Innovation. He added that the Business Models keep on evolving and need Constant Innovation. It started with TCS’ Onsite Offshore Model, followed by Infosys’ state of the art facilities in India better called the Global Development Centres and currently Zensar Technologies latest Business Model is a revolution in itself for the industry. Dr Natarajan informed about the Innovative practices that Zensar Technologies follows in People Management as well. Encouraging Women Leaders, Zensar Technologies is indeed a People Oriented Organisation.

However, one needs two hands to clap. Let one hand be that of the Associates & other of the Organisation and Zensar Technologies shall never stop Clapping. The essence of this was pointed out by Dr Natarajan saying that even if on one morning you feel not going to Zensar, you better quit!

Indeed the ‘Law of Least Efforts’ shall be followed by all Zensarians - Amen!

By: Abhinav Baloni

Guest Lecture: An evening filled with experiences with Mr. Ravi Ramanathan

Mr. Ravi Ramanathan is an information technology professional with over 23 years of professional experience holding a strong and proven track record; be it marketing, sales, business strategy, operations or software delivery program management.

After reading Ravi’s introduction one would definitely think of him being an arrogant professional. But these thoughts of ours totally turned tables when we saw him as a down to earth great personality.

We at ZCBI had the pleasure of being able to interact with a guest lecturer who taught us the art of presenting yourself with humbleness and humor.

As he entered the room he brought along a breeze of comfort. He gave us unique business insights on “How Re-positioning plays an important role” through the Growth Pangs Case Study.

After introducing us to the way he is going to go ahead with the case, he gave us half an hour to go through the case and present our understanding of the case.

We divided ourselves into groups and started presenting our understanding. He helped all of us in articulating our understanding and ideas in a better way and also showed us the other side of the case which most of us failed to locate. He brought in his own style of mentioning “Gabbar and Sambha of Sholay” while elucidating about brand identity and brand image which we understood at a concept level. After Ravi’s insight and real life experience examples we got on to the detailing of these terms in their true sense.

Ravi sat with all of us and encouraged us to raise questions on other’s ideas as well as our ideas. He ensured we have a healthy discussion and that the session is in the right direction without making it evident.

By introducing us to this case and making us present our ideas he not only got us to understand business concepts but also showed us how important it is to hold the audience attention and say the right words at the right time.

He stressed on the importance of good communication; which is having the ability to deliver your thoughts in a crisp and clear manner as also communicating thoughts that are relevant to the subject your addressing.

Ravi made us realize that "It is the ability of an individual to correctly use the information he has in his hands".

He got out some really interesting facts from his Pandora’s Box and spoke on various topics by giving live examples like the Reliance to MORE stores, BRIC to China by 2020 etc. He also mentioned how INNOVATION has been the major factor in "NANO" becoming a reality.

Ravi also stated that he believes in individuality and hence, every person is unique and as managers we should be willing to give an opportunity to every individual and his ideas.

Mr. Ravi Ramanathan is truly an influencing speaker, effective listener and a person with the ability to bring out the best in a person or an audience.

“He or she who speaks less and sense, shouts louder!” These words will always be with us. We all wish to have Mr. Ramanathan at ZCBI, innumerous number of times to share more of his experience and to help to bring out the best in us.

By:- Anneish Gupta

Role of a Business Analyst: A view from Ms. G. Shobha

“Business Analysts are the bridge between business team and IT technical group. More than your background what does matter is “functional knowledge” .You have to grasp functional-knowledge. Everything is how you understand the business-requirements and communicate with client as well and development team. How well you listen and analyse problem to transform it in product” – says Ms. Shobha, Business Analyst, Zensar Technologies, Pune.

Yes, ZCBI’ans had a face to face interaction with Ms. Shobha, who is currently working as Business Analyst for Zensar Technologies and have a good experience of IT projects with complete SDLC. Mr. S. Bala (CFO, Zensar Technologies) was also present and he also explained different aspects of IT business with real world examples.

As per Ms. Shobha, whether it is solution provider or product based IT Company, it needs functional or/and business specialists and based on project requirements, role of BA comes in picture i.e. whether he/she should be pure functional analyst or a Technical-business Analyst who plays both functional as well as a technical role to support QA and while deciding the Technical requirements of the project. You can say, Business Analyst works for clients being with the Solution developer company. He/She speaks clients/user language to design the right requirement.

If you have a specialisation in retail, finance or IT with some project experience, Business Analysis could be a choice of career in different companies.

Any IT project that follows SDLC generally has four steps: (1). Requirement Gathering (2). Application Development (3). Testing-QA and UAT (User Acceptance Testing) (4). Production /Live and then Maintenance/Support. Now-a-days, Requirement gathering, small Modules development and Internal QA are parallel process to reduce the total production time and to avoid the last moment blocker in full complex code. Business Analysts eye on each step and try to be part of QA by running their own test-cases. At the initial stage of a project, BA prepares Business and Functional Requirement-Specification and communicates with development team to come up with technical design documents to make a quality process. After delivery and Integration of the project at client side, they goes Live with the product delivered for few months and sometimes BA are also part of UAT. This is an extract from Ms. Shobha’s session taken on “role of a business analyst in IT industry”. Responsibilities of a Business Analyst are lot more than I wrote here.

By - Rajiv Jain