/dq/media/agency_attachments/UPxQAOdkwhCk8EYzqyvs.png)
Follow Us
New Update
http-equiv="content-type">
March 8th is International Women's Day. While the advent of so many
'Days' throughout the year have diluted their significance, at least
this should be one day when women should reflect back on what they are
actually worth and men should appreciate that the world should have
been a much worse place (and infinitely much duller) without women. And
most men in the corporate world, I am sure, would readily acknowledge
that their workplaces are now much enlivened by the presence of their
female colleagues.
In fact, one of India's female IT corporate, Sanchari Banerjee feels
with confidence on this special day, “A woman has strengths
that amaze men. She can handle trouble and carry heavy burdens. She
holds happiness, love and opinions. She smiles when she feels like
screaming, she sings when she feels like crying, cries when she is
happy, and laughs when she is afraid. Her love is unconditional
!!There's only one thing wrong with her, she sometimes
forgets what she is worth...”
Over the last five years the number of women employees has increased
significantly as our IT industry has been quite active towards voicing
gender inclusivity concerns. However, when it comes to leadership
positions, the industry is yet to catch up pace. The number of female
employees to that of their male counterparts is still poor. Although
the Indian socio-economic scenario is changing fast giving scope for
women empowerment, yet there's a huge gap which needs to be addressed
when it comes to creating a conducive support system that will allow
women to deal with two most competitive priorities of their
lives-family and career.
The Women's Day is now observed as an official holiday in China,
Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan,
Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
Ironically, these are some of the countries with the poorest records as
per as women are concerned, especially having a low proportion of
working women. This tradition, however, encourages men honor their
mothers, wives, girlfriends and colleagues with flowers and small
gifts. While India or we at Dataquest were not observing a holiday, we
decided to go ahead and speak to a group of women CXOs from the
industry. And instead of restricting ourselves to those same issues of
work-life balance and the glass ceiling, we went ahead and asked them
about their business priorities for the year. After all, that would
have been what we normally ask a male CXO; and in today's IT industry
the male-female divide is totally blurred and the glass ceiling almost
broken.
For Padmaja Krishnan, director, sales & marketing, CSC India,
there are quite a number of set goals to be achieved this year. "My top
priorities are to improve the value and business outcome that we
deliver and to be ready for globalization of our clientele," she
informs. According to her, growth is the order of the day. But as the
market is getting saturated, globalization and innovation towards
business approach are the key that can bring in diversity and broaden
business horizon. "This also helps to get exposed to work with the
global workforce that also leads to diversity," she says. She also
wants to create a level of maturity and sensitivity within her
workforce in order to make them competitive for a global work culture.
"That will go beyond every aspect of diversity at workforce and not
just gender diversity," she opines.
For Shikha Rai, CIO at Canon, the business will be growing manifold
this year for Canon and with it will come the responsibility to improve
upon customer satisfaction. “A big chunk of our business
comes from our network of thirty-five strong partners. And it is for
enhancing this network that we are rolling out IT solutions for them to
interact better with us. In addition, the retail partner network is
also becoming a crucial link wherein we are rolling out a national
retail chain,” she says.
Giving further details, Rai adds, “This year at Canon our
focus will also be on putting in place a business continuity plan,
making strategy for the business to go irrespective of any situation.
In terms of technology, I will be involved with business intelligence.
Although we already have business intelligence, the focus will be on
major enhancements by adding many more KPIs and views.” The
integrated management screen will be available across businesses;
moving from the earlier version wherein it was only sales focused, this
time it'll be across business. Â
Says Ritu Madbhavi, VP, IT FCB Ulka, “This year my focus will
be on the implementation of an integrated solution that spans across
the financials, workflow, knowledge management, archiving and entire
talent management system. This integrated solution is a single sign-on
system with Microsoft active directory and email solution.”
One of the key highlights of this solution is that it includes full
replication and redundancy in place, which means that automated
replication is happening on its own. Another key feature is zero
downtime. “Last year we also started with SAP implementation
for financial solution which has been integrated with talent management
solution in the back-end. This project is now fully
deployed,” she adds.
Sunita Cherian, GM, talent management, Wipro says “There are
many progressive steps I see. The increasing number of organizations
that celebrate the day, the higher number of wishes from colleagues at
work, more meaningful initiatives that are launched or played out in
the immediate week preceding International Womens' Day, participation
of clients in the initiative, efforts to have suppliers share in the
action, the higher number of women who gain a degree or are employed
and the list goes on...” She further adds, “What
may be most important now is to live up to the trust that in all these
different ways, society has placed in us, and to come out shining like
we know we surely can.”
Growth and expansion are the key focus areas for Sudhi Agarwal,
founder, Ariose Software. "We have now overcome our sustenance phase.
Right now we want to go for the next level of business growth," she
says. Therefore, Agarwal is looking to get some sort of financial
support or soft loans that can help her achieve her goal. "I am also
looking for some investment opportunities abroad in order to expand our
horizon and diversify," she informs. Apart from that, Agarwal is also
keen to define and stabilize the software delivery
processes.  Â
Sanchari Banerjee of Microsoft lists her top three priorities for the
year.
1. To drive better customer
satisfaction and better customer experience by making the service
deliverables of the MS products better
2.To drive better customer awareness of the products by different
consumer marketing programs
3.To drive better profitability of the channel partners by motivating
them to up sell Microsoft products
Currently, in relation to e-waste handling, there are projects being
chalked out to bring the informal sector in line with the formal
sector. The main objective of this is to align the informal sector
without compromising on the activities in the value chain. In other
words, according to Lakshmi Raghupathy, advisor to MAIT, this would
bring about a smooth flow between the formal and informal sector. She
further adds that the talks she gave at recent conferences at Shanghai
and Austria on e-waste were well received. According to her, this is
one of the major new turning points in the field of e-waste. Remind her
further about being in an unusual being from the cosy jobs taken by
other women on the occasion of Women's Day, she says that balancing
work and life for a woman is always a 50:50 win:win situation.
Remembering her hey days, she says I grew up with my children as I have
completed my studies after marriage only. Like for today's women, their
career grows and then their family comes into the picture, but for her
the scenario was quiet different as both grew together, totally
blending well with each other and complimenting each other. So, she
adds that there was neither a fleck of strain nor did the question of
compromise arise. As a message for today's woman she says that there is
a need for planning and a lot of discipline, if one needs to be
successful at both scenes. Ask her why she believes women have the
power to excel, she says that their in-built strength ensures that they
are always in the forefront and each field will bear a testimonial of
this. A perfect example are the women folk from the rural areas, who
though in a veil work shoulder to shoulder with the men. Then there are
women like the Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, who have have done a lot
of work for the environment. Indian women should follow the example set
by her and gather inspiration from her. On this occasion of
International Women's Day, Dr Raghupath says that women should continue
to take their respective missions forward and nurture the next
generation and not be a mere showpiece or accept treatment as a
commodity.
Business and women, think again. Reeta Budhay, director, finance and
logistics, Business Algorithms, is a lady who can talk economic
scenario and home management with apt ease. Talking about the economic
effects of the recession on her business she says that it has to a
certain extent affected their company's future plans for projects as a
result of which they are neither working on any major projects nor have
they planned for any. She describes their policy as a wait-and-watch
one. She informs that they are basically into the retail business of
HP. And considering the scenario that HP is planning a major revamp in
its policy after a majority of HP's shares were acquired by Dell,
according to Budhay this is one decision that they are looking forward
to and expect that it will shape many things in the future. After such
a huge development, the most awaited event is to see how HP reacts to
this situation.
The last word must go to Sucharita Eashwar of Nasscom. “It is
great to see Women's Day no longer a symbolic public gesture and a
marketing opportunity for products and services only. We see women as
major contributors to the economy and leaders in every arena of human
enterprise.” Research shows that women will play a decisive
role in creating innovative solutions for our planet. “I
welcome the Women's Bill being introduced today. It will play a huge
role in bringing women into the public domain and the country will
benefit from energizing the hitherto underutilized capacities of 50% of
our population,” she adds.
to every woman on this day: Â Dare to dream big - and the
universe will make it reality