Operational Scalability: Prasad Gandhikota of SAP America On How To Set Up Systems, Procedures, And People To Prepare A Business To Scale
Hiring Right Talent: When it comes to setting up systems and procedures you need to hire right talent with business process and system implementation skills capable of bridging the gap between business and IT systems. These skills are not readily available and are hard to find in the marketplace so you should have a very clear strategy for hiring right people with right skills either as full time employees for few critical system design roles to keep the knowledge within the organization and outsource through consulting companies for some other key roles specific to the program. So second most important thing is securing right talent to set up systems, processes, and procedures in order to prepare a business to scale.
In today’s fast-paced business environment, scalability is not just a buzzword; it’s a necessity. Entrepreneurs often get trapped in the daily grind of running their businesses, neglecting to put in place the systems, procedures, and people needed for sustainable growth. Without this foundation, companies hit bottlenecks, suffer inefficiencies, and face the risk of stalling or failing. This series aims to delve deep into the intricacies of operational scalability. How do you set up a framework that can adapt to growing customer demands? What are the crucial procedures that can streamline business operations? How do you build a team that can take on increasing responsibilities while maintaining a high standard of performance?
In this interview series, we are talking to CEOs, Founders, Operations Managers Consultants, Academics, Tech leaders & HR professionals, who share lessons from their experience about “How To Set Up Systems, Procedures, And People To Prepare A Business To Scale”. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing S V Prasad Gandhikota.
Prasad Gandhikota is a Senior Business Consultant at SAP America, as a part of which he helps some of the best-known fortune 500 companies across North America in their digital and business transformation programs as a trusted advisor. Prasad played a variety of leadership roles in supply chain manufacturing functional consulting, project management and program delivery management. Prasad has consistently proved that he is capable of making sound operational decisions by delivering excellence across customer transformation journey that impacted the entire company.
Prasad is recognized by Marquis who’s who in America for his dedication to manufacturing industry, inclusion in which is limited to individuals who possess professional integrity, demonstrate outstanding achievements in their respective fields and have made innumerable contributions to society as a whole. Prasad is an alumnus of Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai (India) with degrees in Science, Technology and Management, and holds certificates in Supply Chain Management, Sustainability & Business Innovation, Leadership in Digital Transformation from MIT (USA) and SAP (Germany). Prasad won several prestigious awards like Rock star of the supply chain award in 2023 and lifetime achievement award 2024 by Food Logistics for his invaluable contributions in the field of supply chain management. Prasad published scholarly research papers in journals of repute like international journal of innovative science and research technology (IJISRT). Prasad is a fellow of SASS, SAIARD and Nest constantly sharing his expertise in scientific and business communities.
Having served more than 18 years in SAP advisory consulting roles and 6 years in domain manufacturing roles across APAC, UK and USA, Prasad reached top of his field with a proven track record of designing innovative solutions to leading organizations across the globe in fulfilling their strategic objectives of achieving business transformation goals by delivering on multiyear roadmaps and implementing modernized ERP systems with cloud technologies. All this work done by Prasad has helped companies in developing self-stabilizing supply chains that addressed mission critical operational challenges and supply chain disruptions preparing them for next vital transformations. Outside work, he mentored graduate students at Royal academy of engineering, regularly peer reviews research & scholarly articles at IJEIS, IJISSCM and AOM. Judged research projects at University of Michigan, Minnesota academy of Science, DECA Inc and FBLA. Judged individual and corporate awards of excellence in business, supply chain management and IT.
Prior to SAP America, Prasad worked at Conagra Brands Inc USA a leading and distinguished company in frozen food manufacturing in the capacity of IT Delivery Leader where he is responsible for leading four pillars named technology integration programs for mergers & acquisitions, ERP modernization programs for US and International, Application management services and continuous improvement programs. Prior to Conagra Brands Inc, Prasad worked at big 4 consulting in USA where he assisted distinguished companies in life sciences, construction & mining equipment, medical technology, consumer products and electronics component manufacturing in their digital transformation programs.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I grew up in India and thanks to my parents who understood the value of quality education. I studied at my maternal grandparent’s place in southern India till my 6th grade and then moved to central India to my parent’s place where I completed my bachelor’s degree in science majoring in Mathematics. I then moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) for an advanced bachelor’s degree in technology from Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. I always wanted to acquire a technology degree and I have accomplished my dream of becoming a technologist.
After completing my technology degree in 1995 majoring in textiles I have worked for textile processing and machine manufacturing companies in India, during this time I got an opportunity to get trained in Germany on advanced textile machineries which helped me to commission 65 yarn dyeing machines and set up process for a leading textile company in India. For 6 years I have mastered the end-to-end supply chain processes from procurement, product costing, product quality, manufacturing to packaging and delivery.
At this juncture I was trying to do something different with my career and took a break from my work and went to upgrade my business and IT skills through a two-year full-time MBA program (2002–2004) and eventually acquired industry leading SAP certification in supply chain manufacturing in 2005 which provided me SAP technology skills to make a career shift in SAP consulting. I utilized my depth and breadth of manufacturing expertise gained over working for several years in manufacturing companies along with SAP technology and consulting skills when delivering on mission critical digital and business transformation programs. I was hired by some of the best and leading companies in the industry to assist in their journey of technology enabled transformations.
I Played the role of IT Delivery Leader and business relationship manager as part of 11 billion $ mergers and acquisition program where I led multiple teams and collaborated with business and IT senior leadership to complete the technology integration in a record 36 months. In another major program of significant importance to the company my role is to deliver on a global strategy to modernize ERPs with Canada, Mexico and the US and transition from multiple ERPs to one global instance of SAP S/4 HANA, I built 35 plus high performing IT consulting teams in various workstreams across the supply chain and led different phases of the program by designing scalable solutions and by providing enterprise architecture expertise. Received CIO/GBIS Star award for Q2 & Q3 2021 for successfully integrating a billion $ brand during unprecedented times of global pandemic coming up with innovative ways of remote collaboration.
I Played the role of manufacturing principal consultant for a global aerospace and defense company where I successfully delivered global SAP & demand planning deployments worth $ 2 billion revenue generation across UK, US, Europe, Asia, and Mexico. I drove business teams, SAP application teams, system integrator teams by providing expertise in architecture, change management and business process mapping which helped the entire company in achieving the strategic objective of delivering on global ERP deployments and bringing the entire company under one global aero instance. I was instrumental in designing innovative manufacturing work bench to systematically execute production processes, serialization, and tooling processes under one common custom application highly integrated with a third party application to capture labor hours which has helped the organization to dramatically improve the efficiency and productivity of manufacturing and accounts payable processes. Also designed and implemented sales inventory and operations planning in SAP systems for effective annual operating plan. Received several team excellence, individual excellence, and partner awards for the outstanding work in global deployments and making an impact on the entire company.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
During the campus placements of my B SC Tech program at ICT, Mumbai I was offered a job to work for a reputed textile company in western India and after competing my degree I joined this company as Graduate Engineer Trainee, and I was put in a department called coning where my job was to work in shifts and improve the production efficiency to achieve or exceed target production. I was more interested in working in laboratory to contribute and improve my color matching skills in stead of dealing with contract labor in coning department. When I expressed my work interests to my manager, he mentored me with ease telling the importance of working with people and learning the techniques of improving production efficiency by using systems, processes, procedures, and machines and at the same time he also offered me a general shift once a month to contribute to the laboratory to hone my color matching skills. The lesson I learned from that is the importance of all round capabilities like managing and motivating people to extract maximum output, employ technology and engineering skills to improve the efficiency of machines and exceed production targets in addition to the textile skills of color matching and creativity is not work dependent, you can be creative in anything you do is the biggest lesson I learned out of this experience.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
I am privileged to work for some of the most distinguished companies in the respective industry which includes enterprise resource planning software, consumer products food manufacturing, aerospace & defense, big 4 consulting, automotives, textile manufacturing to name a few.
Currently working for SAP which is world’s largest provider of enterprise application software and is instrumental in making the world run better by helping organizations in each and every industry to operate efficiently. SAP is committed to bringing out the best in every business helping customers reach agility at scale, achieve more across their value chains and drive sustainability at their core. Our goal is to be the #1 Enterprise application and Business AI company. Employee retention of 96.4% and employee engagement index at 80% and 76% of SAP employees are SAP shareholders. Top cloud vendor with cloud user base of more than 299m users and with broadest portfolio of modular and suite solutions available in the cloud, on premise and hybrid. SAP is a market share leader in enterprise applications software, enterprise resource management applications, supply chain management applications, procurement applications software, travel and expense management software, and ERP software according to IDC. SAP is committed to the highest standards of ethics and compliance. Ethical business builds trust and helps the world run better. By doing business the right way and rejecting corruption, bribery and fraud, SAP contributes to the culture of integrity that positively impacts social and economic development, furthering education, justice, democracy, prosperity, development, and health worldwide. I am playing the role of compliance ambassador in the office of Ethics & Compliance encouraging anyone within and outside of SAP to raise their concerns on ethics and compliance through Speak Out at SAP platform. At SAP we understand the deep connections between environmental and social challenges and realize that Global developments like climate change, poverty, and increasing inequality are serious issues that all stakeholders in the worldwide economy must face. SAP’s corporate social responsibility creates long-term social and environmental impact and business value and is part of SAP’s sustainable business strategy and puts SAP’s purpose into action. Our strategy powers equitable access to economic opportunity and education & employment, contributing to a more sustainable and just world.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Power of Optimism to Transform Companies: Most part of my career more than 18 years out of 24 plus years of total experience I was heavily involved and engaged in highly visible projects and programs of multi-million dollar investments which not only transformed the way the company as a whole operates but also the culture of the company. When so much is at stake in these business transformation programs the power of optimism is a very important character trait, I developed to keep the needle moving in the right direction. Technical, functional, project management and domain skills of respective industry are needed to be successful in these kinds of digital transformation programs but in addition to them refuse to lose, can do attitude and optimism is equally important. In my real world experience of implementing SAP (Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing) for small, medium and large corporations in wide variety of industry sectors requires power of optimism as these are the most difficult projects where companywide business processes are streamlined to improve productivity and efficiency and each and every employee is involved in these programs at varying levels of involvement right from executive teams, individual business departments, information technology department to end users. You will face variety of problems in different phases like preparation phase where the as-is business processes are documented and expert skills needed are identified and then recruited internally and through system integrator/consulting companies, in explore phase as-is business processes are understood, to-be processes are evaluated and gaps identified and documented through fit to standard workshops involving SAP consultants and business subject matter experts, in realization phase SAP systems are configured to map the business processes and development objects for reports, interfaces, conversion, enhancements, forms and workflows are designed and developed through detailed functional and technical specifications, in testing and training phase system integration testing’s and user acceptance testing are planned and executed with involvement of IT consultants, business super users and end users along with project management experts which requires multiple cycles of data conversion, data loads and testing cycles followed by final phase of cut over to move the company from legacy systems to SAP systems taking the project live. Each and every phase of these critical programs are complex and requires optimistic skills of responding to the problems and make informed and timely decisions to successfully deliver the programs on time and within budgets.
Power of Humility to Transform Companies: Humility is a much needed character trait which is imperative to have in my area of expertise and field of work in advisory consulting as I have had to work with and deal with different people with different mindsets and one thing which is common is that everyone is just trying to be perfect and learning every day based on the situations encountered whether professionally or personally. So, humility is part and parcel of my job as I have to work closely with senior management people at client/customer companies in advising them on the best practice system implementations as part of their heavy investments in digital core transformation programs and show them the returns on their investments by designing and delivering innovative solutions which has the power of transforming the companies and taking them to next level ahead of their competition. I make sure to practice and deliver the power of humility irrespective of the title or the position of the person as I engage and interact with wide variety of people across the companies including but not limited to product development, supply chain business, account executives, consultants and architects, project and program management, consulting companies and customers. Depending on the situation I use a variety of leadership styles using the power of humility in all situations, for example when working with subject matter experts and consultants I use democratic style in a participative style of leadership with direct interactions and decisions made are the result of an open dialogue, when working with consulting companies where I am building high performing teams I use autocratic style of leadership making the decisions of whom to hire to successfully deliver on crucial programs significant to company’s growth and competitiveness, when working with employees or consultants with whom a trusted relationship is built I use a Laissez-faire style of leadership where my team member gets to decide what to do and how to do it, when engaged in solving a complex problem I use facilitation style of leadership in which I am actively involved with cross functional teams focused on achieving a particular goal by engaging in a dialogue asking relevant questions. I reiterate that one thing which is very common in all the leadership styles I employ based on situations is the power of humility.
Power of Creativity to Transform Companies: Creativity is important when it comes to transform companies by implementing modernized systems, reengineering business processes, setting up global operating procedures and most importantly people as without people rest all cannot happen even with artificial intelligence and even if it happens it will be of no use as it is not going to be responsible or sustainable. So key is the people and creativity come through people for the benefit of people. Now since we understand the power of creativity let me deep dive how I have used it to the advantage of self and the companies I worked for, the most important requirement to use your creative side of thinking is to have your basics very clear in your area of expertise. For example when you want to design a manufacturing solution for a process industry to effectively track a product across the supply chain from source to consumer then you should know the basics of how a process industry operates and what exactly is process manufacturing and what kinds of production methods are used like bulk manufacturing based on available capacities and then you need to have a basic understanding of enterprise resource planning systems and how they can be configured or customized to systematically track a product from source to consumer by implementing batch management functionality and once you have a basic understanding of the industry processes, software system configurations and programming knowledge to enhance and customize the product you will use your creativity to solve the problem at hand in the best possible way based on industry best practices and standards. As same problem can be solved in many different ways and creativity will be used to define the problem correctly and chose the best available option by ranking and rating the available options making an informed decision evaluating pros and cons. I have acquired the power of creativity by getting the basic education in sciences, technology, business and used by experience of working for wide variety of industries implementing modernized technology systems to design and implement creative supply chain management solutions for companies across the globe including APAC, UK and USA to become a successful business leader.
Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader? I’m curious to understand how these challenges have shaped your leadership.
Absolutely, as part of management consulting working as an internal consultant for most distinguished companies in aerospace & defense sector and consumer products industry and as an external consultant advising fortune 500 global companies across North America working for SAP in advisory roles, I have helped organizations in making those difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. I have used my management consulting skills in clearly defining the problem and documenting it, as it is very crucial to understand the problem well before looking at various options to solve the complex problem at hand. Once the problem is understood and documented I look for possible solutions of solving the problem as same problem can be solved in multiple ways. I list out all the possible options and then come up with potential pros and cons for each possible solution and then rate and rank the solution by providing appropriate weightages. This way I was able to make difficult decisions by picking the best out of the available choices and also helped organizations in making those difficult decisions or hard choices. With out objectively evaluating the choices all paths may look apparently good but when you evaluate the choices in an objective way keeping in mind the long term scalability to extend the product or solution globally paths may seem good subjectively at superficial level but when you deep dive objectively peeling the onion it becomes very clear to select the best choice and make that difficult decision involving all the stakeholders by making an informed decision. But to make those informed decisions in a much more objective way with calculated risks and risk mitigation plans requires sufficient amount of knowledge and data and I was instrumental in making those decisions in the business transformation programs where multiple workstreams are involved with conflicting priorities and political ambitions and unwilling to change to bring them across the table, look in to their eyes and influence the decision making with knowledge by taking authority leaders in to confidence and was well liked among the executive leadership teams for effective decision making. With these management consulting techniques and strategies, I was instrumental in delivering complex business and digital transformation programs during a 11 billion dollar mergers & acquisition program at a leading frozen food manufacturing company in US by integrating the two companies from technological systems, processes, procedures, and people perspective in a record 36 month transformation program and received several star awards. In another major global SAP deployment program for a leading fortune company in aerospace & defense sector I was specifically hired in India and then transferred to UK and USA to work and contribute my expertise of manufacturing processes and SAP systems applications and products configuration and customization expertise in global SAP deployments. I was awarded individual excellence, team excellence and partner awards for relentlessly supporting the internal customers in UK and USA. These are just few examples of how I have helped several companies across the globe in their transformation journeys and indeed these experiences have shaped me as an extraordinary leader helping the global organizations in the world run better by making them great organizations in the good industries.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion about Operational Scalability. In order to make sure that we are all on the same page, let’s begin with a simple definition. What does Operational Scalability mean to you?
Operational Scalability is the ability to scale standardized business processes and systems across the organization for smooth flow of business during operational expansion, mergers & acquisitions by building a global template of common business processes.
Operational expansion can happen for a variety of reasons like adding new products or processes in the existing company or acquiring new companies as part of mergers and acquisitions. In both the instances global design template will need to be used as a baseline to standardize the business processes with an understanding that 80% of the business processes will be common and 20% needs either reengineering or redesign which is evaluated as part of discovery phase.
Which types of business can most benefit from investing in Operational Scalability?
Almost all businesses can benefit from investing in Operational Scalability. In my experience of working around the world where I was engaged in implementing modernized systems applications and products (SAP) for wide variety of businesses like textiles, automotives, aerospace & defense, building automation, energy & sustainability solutions, transportation, chemicals, life sciences, consumer products, bio medical, electronics, food processing, oil & gas etc., have heavily benefitted from investing in Operational Scalability to confirm that Operational Scalability is not business agnostic.
Why is it so important for a business to invest time, energy, and resources into Operational Scalability?
Operational Scalability is directly linked to the growth of business both in terms of bottom line and top line, so it becomes naturally important for any business to invest time, energy, and resources into Operational Scalability. It is imperative for the businesses in every industry to innovate ahead of competition, Pioneer companies have always innovated and re-innovated their products, business processes and business models at a faster rate in comparison with their competitors to achieve differentiated business capabilities and outcomes in the context of their specific industry. Cost savings are essential for any business to achieve desired profit margins and investing time, energy and resources into operational scalability provides cost advantage based on economies of scale and through implementing modern ERP for improved efficiency and productivity. Also investing in resources like cloud ERP operational scalability can be achieved with low total cost of ownership enabling a shift from capital expenditures to operating expenditures directly contributing to business growth. Running business in today’s world of economic uncertainty, geo-political conflicts, and disrupted supply chains it becomes even more important for a business to invest in enterprise resource planning systems with cloud capabilities in order to get instant insights across end to end business operations helping employees across the organizations to proactively analyze, collaborate, prepare, and plan for the immediate next steps and act with urgency from anywhere in the world. With unpredictable changes in product demands due to global pandemics there is a need to invest time, energy, and resources into Operational Scalability to dynamically reallocate resources to new mission critical priorities.
In contrast, what happens to a business that does not invest time, energy, and resources into Operational Scalability?
If business is not investing time, energy, and resources into Operational Scalability then they will lose out to competition, if businesses are not proactively planning for operational scalability, then they will not be able to respond to the product demand fluctuations arising due to external factors and will lose opportunity to increase sales and market share negatively impacting top and bottom lines. Product mix and marketing mix are strategies employed by companies which becomes an input to Operational Scalability for designing efficient supply chain networks, if companies are not able to scale their operations based on the marketing strategies, then they will not be able to fulfill customer demand by delivering on time and in full (OTIF) losing out on the sales revenues and profits.
Can you please share a story from your experience about how a business grew dramatically when they worked on their Operational Scalability?
My experience working for a leading company in frozen food manufacturing which grew dramatically through Operational Scalability is worth sharing. The company is 100 years old conglomerate headquartered in central US with manufacturing operations across US, Canada, and Mexico. The operational scalability was achieved through a mega merger and acquisition program worth 11 billion dollars. The transformation is tough as it is a big ship to turn around and involved wide variety of strategies like moving the headquarters to central US to take advantage of the quality supply of sales skills keeping production, consumer foods supply chain, R&D, IT in mid-west, outsourcing non critical IT operations work and keeping strategic and critical roles internal, streamlining the end to end supply chain business processes as part of mergers and acquisitions program through supply chain heavy integration program was achieved in record 36 month timeframe with seven waves of integrating two giant companies from technology and business processes perspective where non value added business processes are eliminated through business process reengineering and common business processes are deployed in 15 manufacturing plants across US and based on the new requirements and identified gaps new processes are designed and implemented which helped business grew dramatically by reducing operating costs through implementing modernized ERP systems which allowed to track and reduce the product waste by designing innovative solutions. The company achieved cost synergies of mergers and acquisitions through business process and technology integration within 3 years. I played a critical role in managing four pillars named supply chain heavy integration strategic programs, Application management services providing 24/7 production support to 35 plus manufacturing plants across US, Implementing Modern ERP to Canada international operations and continuous improvement programs helping the company’s business grow dramatically by designing innovative supply chain manufacturing solutions as part of SAP integrations and Operational Scalability. Flawless design of the supply chain business processes within SAP systems and its integration with third party systems like Rockwell automation and AG systems for billion dollar brands is key making sure that the operating systems, software, and business processes are scalable to the growing number of business users keeping in mind the future programs of Modern ERP implementation to domestic US and Mexico.
I have similar experiences with aerospace and defense company headquartered in US with operations around the world where I was instrumental in designing and deploying end to end business processes as part of global SAP deployments in UK and USA and also in designing demand planning solutions as part of pilot program and then rolling out the solution to six other locations in Singapore, Germany and USA which has helped the company’s aerospace and defense business grew dramatically through implementation of global aero design model as part of solving complex companywide business problems. I was able to successfully scale the operations with a carefully designed strategy of designing scalable demand planning solutions for a pilot plant in Phoenix keeping in mind that the same solution will need to be rolled out to 25 sites across the world. The pilot program was a huge success based on the business feedback and we successfully scaled the solution to 25 other sites across the globe where I played a key role of Deployment Leader. The company’s business grew dramatically by this program as the innovative solution has provided effective forecasting capabilities at strategic business group level which has improved both top line and bottom line of the company.
Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the “Five Most Important Things A Business Leader Should Do To Set Up Systems, Procedures, And People To Prepare A Business To Scale”? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.
1. Strategic Planning: Setting up Systems, Procedures, and People requires good amount of strategic planning as setting up systems, processes and procedures is a tedious activity and a companywide effort, so you should have a very clear understanding of the overall scope of the program in terms of the departments, workstreams and the people involved in setting up systems, procedures and processes across the company has to be identified and strategized as part of strategic planning initiatives. There are wide variety of implementation methodologies like big bang approach, pilot implementation with wave wise rolling out of the systems, procedures, and processes and once you chose the best available methodology based on your company’s scope you will need to deep dive into the program management methodology of agile or waterfall implementation of systems and processes. So strategic planning is the foremost important thing a business leader should focus on to set up systems, procedures, and people to prepare a business to scale.
2. Hiring Right Talent: When it comes to setting up systems and procedures you need to hire right talent with business process and system implementation skills capable of bridging the gap between business and IT systems. These skills are not readily available and are hard to find in the marketplace so you should have a very clear strategy for hiring right people with right skills either as full time employees for few critical system design roles to keep the knowledge within the organization and outsource through consulting companies for some other key roles specific to the program. So second most important thing is securing right talent to set up systems, processes, and procedures in order to prepare a business to scale.
3. Execution: Based on my experience on delivering these kinds of complex programs of setting up systems, processes and procedures impacting wide variety of departments and divisions like IT, PMO, Manufacturing, R&D, Planning, Procurement, Product quality, Corporate Finance & Accounting across the company including people playing wide variety of roles in these divisions and departments as part of setting up systems and processes execution is the most difficult thing to do and you need to track these programs very closely on weekly basis through a very structured program management office governance where few senior leaders will be tracking the health of the program horizontally across the departments while department specific leaders will be tracking the activities vertically with in the individual departmental work stream. Setting up executive steering committees for leadership involvement and engagement and individual program boards also plays an important role for speedy and timely decision making carefully identifying the risks and setting up risk mitigation and change management plans. Multiple phases like preparation, discovery, realization, testing, cut over, go live need to be executed with perfection to be successful in setting up systems, processes, procedures, and people to prepare a business to scale.
4. Maintenance: Once the program of setting up systems, processes, procedures, and people is live then the fourth most important thing is to stabilize the program as quickly as possible within a time frame of 2–4 weeks where a hyper care support is provided to the program and the defects raised during this period are quickly fixed closely supporting the business users by tracking and monitoring the business metrics and creating business continuity plans. Once the stabilization period is successfully completed the program is shifted to run mode or maintenance mode and taken over by application management services team providing ongoing production support.
5. Continuous Improvement: When the program of setting up systems, processes, and procedures is delivered and moved to application management services team for ongoing production support then as part of production support activities depending on the defects raised by business user’s certain defects requires an approach of formulating a new mini project to improve up on a certain process or a module within a system as part of continuous improvement journey. So, fifth most important thing post setting up systems, processes, procedures, and people is continuous improvement program to prepare a business to scale.
What are some common misconceptions businesses have about scaling? Can you please explain?
Some common misconceptions businesses have about scaling businesses through implementing modernized systems or digital & business transformation initiatives are:
- These are easy to execute programs however realities are harsh as research shows that 70% of the businesses either fail drastically or do not achieve the desired business outcomes.
- It is easy to acquire the required specialist skills needed to scale the business by implementing systems. Research shows that it is hard to find people with combined knowledge of domain manufacturing, SAP system configuration & customization skills and project & program management skills.
- You can achieve goals by hiring consulting companies. Reality is completely outsourcing core activities like setting up systems and procedures to streamline business processes and scale businesses have failed miserably.
How do you keep your team motivated during periods of rapid growth or change?
I use the power of acceptance, accepting everyone with their weaknesses is very important as every individual comes with their own strengths and weaknesses and as a leader you should be able to read people well and use their strengths to the benefit of organizations and at the same time have courage to provide constructive feedback and mentor the individuals by partnering with them not necessarily with authority. I also use power of relationships because when you are able to build those ever lasting relationships with everyone around you then it becomes easy to get the work done as people will be more than willing to work for you. It is equally important to motivate teams and individuals during periods of rapid growth or change by providing a sense of confidence through leading from front in case of tough situations and leading from behind the scenes when things are moving in right direction by sometimes even ignoring smaller mistakes and making sure that the lessons are learned in the process. Once you identify the willingness and abilities of your team it becomes easy to apply right strategies to lead and motivate your teams when you are leading those complex business transformation programs during periods of rapid growth or change. Though change is the only constant we all know but many people’s views are change is good for others but not for me, in these situations there is a need to deploy objective methods of organizational change management by bringing in experts of OCM to be able to communicate the benefits of discipline, standard processes and systems by providing the true picture of future by training the teams on new systems, processes and procedures during periods of rapid growth or change. So, there is definitely no one strategy fits all but you have to apply right strategy based on the period of rapid growth or change.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Admitting mistakes without justifying them” This is very much relevant to me in my professional as well as personal life as in both cases owning up my mistakes, apologizing, realizing, and transforming almost always earns acceptance and respect. Consequences nevertheless come to us, but so will the courage to face them. Start living by your values, do not compromise on them. Pay attention to being right and doing right. Ensure your thoughts for yourself and others are pure, your words are uplifting, your attitude is humble, your behavior with people is polite, your actions are righteous, and your decisions are beneficial to you, and everyone involved. But if you make a mistake, admit it immediately, take responsibility. Don’t justify, no matter how severe the consequence is. Become determined to never repeat your mistake. Accept your weaknesses and work on them.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Never discriminate people based on their color, language, cultures, religious orientations, origins, or country of birth. Create level playing field for everyone. Create Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive workplaces. Mental health is a real concern especially in youth and there is a need to take this seriously and do everything to restore the mental health. Sexual harassments of all forms are a serious concern and again there is a need to do everything to avoid these kinds of situations. Substance abuse is indeed another serious issue, as the use of substance is ruining the beautiful lives of youth, and everyone being addicted.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Readers can further follow my work online through Prasad Gandhikota | LinkedIn
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Operational Scalability: Prasad Gandhikota of SAP America On How To Set Up Systems, Procedures, And… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.