BALARKA HAJRA
Bangalore
Summary
Innovative and adaptable technology leader, offering over 21 years of experience in the areas of customer engagement, client partnerships and customer experience strategies. CAREER SUMMARY Passionate for supporting and transforming customers’ experience, credited with implementing a variety of programs to accelerate time-to-value, improve product adoption, actively manage the customer lifecycle, advance solutions via customer advocacy and feedback, and lead renewal and account expansion utilizing CRM and data management tools. Ability to deliver a high degree of customer satisfaction by partnering with the internal teams to ensure the customers’ expectations are met. Skill to navigate complex organizations to accelerate product adoption, influence collaboration, evangelize opportunities for growth, and secure renewals. Proven leader and motivator, with deep experience building and leading cross-regional customer success organizations.
Overview
19
19
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Principal, Customer Success Executive
RED HAT INDIA PVT LTD
05.2023 - Current
- Drive and promote the Product Value Realization Program for Oracle with top-tier and strategic accounts in APAC
- NA and EMEA for both On-Prem and Cloud SaaS, PaaS and IaaS customers
- Improve the Voice of Customer program for NA Strategic accounts by introducing NPS and CES as primary drivers
- Setup the Customer Success Function from a scratch by identifying, training, and hiring the right set of individuals
- Attained 98% customer retention in Q3, 2019 and achieved 102% of up-sell pipeline
- Managed and met on-boarding timelines for over 90% of the customer base and over 88% of the new deployments
- Served customers like Charles Schwab, Rodan+Fields, JP Morgan Chase, Havas Health, Barclays Capital, Goldman
- Sachs etc
- Established procedures and protocols for Customer Communication, Customer Escalations and Customer Satisfaction
- Managed Renewal and Upsell of over 1.8 million USD for the year 2015-16 and achieved a total upsell and renewal of over 110% of the quota assigned in 2016-17 at Velocity Tech-Sol., Responsible for working independently to set and achieve mid-term objectives aligned to Red Hat company business goals
- Uses, promotes, provides feedback/best practices on Customer Success Tools & Resources
- Knowledge sharing by mentoring associates on Customer Success team
- Act as a mentor for new and junior associates across CSM teams and geos, guiding associates when collaborating cross-functionally
- Identifying and driving successful product adoption routes with customer's Red Hat technologies based on business objectives
- Lead the activities of other professional staff (team lead), serving as expert regional or functional resource
- Leader within the virtual account team, identifies the resources needed to make the customer successful, and engages RH partners of the customers
- Take on leadership responsibilities at team and regional level with global collaboration
- Seamlessly moves customer conversations towards strategic goals
Manager, Customer Success Architects
RED HAT INDIA PVT LTD
04.2022 - 05.2023
- Provide direction, coaching, and mentoring to increase my team's capabilities, develop their competencies, and ensure that goals and expectations are met
- Actively engaged in defining and building the Cloud Services Customer Success strategy
- Participated in regional and global continuous process improvement initiatives
- Identified and prioritized engagement opportunities where the Cloud Services Success team plays a key role in improving the customer experience and accelerating the adoption of Red Hat's Hybrid Cloud technologies
- Established and maintain tight feedback loops across product, marketing, enablement, field sales, consulting, support, and service reliability engineering (SRE) teams
- Managed the collection, aggregation, interpretation, and reporting of organizational performance metrics to be used
- Hired the best customer success talents
- Managed escalations to ensure delivery of positive customer experience.
Director, Customer Experience Strategies
Oracle India
01.2021 - 03.2022
- Help ensure customers get the most out of their investment in Oracle’s SaaS, IaaS and PaaS products
- Drive a value-based program, continuing the group’s involvement in the strategic account planning process for Oracle’s cloud customers, and its strong collaboration with the Sales and CSM organizations
- Target/ measure business benefits and plans to promote further adoption of Oracle cloud solutions either to realign to the expected business impact or to further expand beyond these goals
- Define & manage the needed customer interview pipeline effort, which includes leveraging best practices and techniques in identifying, quantifying, and tracking customers for these business value reviews
- Lead the identification and implementation of program methods, tools, guidelines, and standards to establish a stable framework that supports the value realization effort
- Review customer decision-maker level interviews or workshops to develop insightful comparative benchmark deliverables
- Develop and manage a pipeline of customer value realization interviews, define, and operates under clear responsibilities / accountabilities with other Oracle value practitioner organizations
- Solicit ideas, discuss methodology and conclusions in a collaborative, consensus-oriented environment to effectively address change management
- Solicit ideas, discuss methodology and conclusions in a collaborative, consensus-oriented environment to effectively address change management
- Guide/train different Oracle stakeholders (CSMs, global marketing/advocacy organization) in delivering value realization services
- Overcome corporate inertia, resistance to change and other objections.
Director, Customer Success
CXWAI Technologies India Pvt Ltd(Firsthive)
01.2020 - 06.2020
- Determine the strategic and tactical customer success team KRAs viz
- Account retention, revenue growth, customer contract renewals and customer satisfaction
- Drive the adherence to and ongoing refinement of customer experience on FirstHive
- Hire, train & develop team members to drive to customer satisfaction and usage of FirstHive
- Develop & execute inter & intra team processes and procedures to effectively collaborate and drive growth with customer experience
- Drive new customer referrals, advocacy from existing customers
- Lead strategic, cross-functional initiatives such as customer journeys, maturity models, voice-of-customer, and product feedback
- Build strong relationships and collaborate with sales for new wins
- Define and implement procedures, metrics, and reporting processes related to our application usage to determine key insights to the customer experience
- Own accurate forecasting, account assignments and bandwidth management processes
- Employ a strong strategic vision to evolve CSM program toward a tailored, best-in-class experience for larger and more strategic customers
- Ability to demonstrate prior success building and managing teams and process to improve customer satisfaction while reducing churn
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills; ability to communicate and relate well with others from a variety of backgrounds and levels
- Strong negotiation skills, resourcefulness, firm decision-making skills
- Team Size Managed is 7.
Director Customer
QUARK SOFTWARE INDIA PVT. LTD
07.2019 - 11.2019
- Driving Customer Success Outcomes by increasing renewal rates and expanding revenue in accounts
- Influence future lifetime value through higher product adoption, customer satisfaction and overall health scores
- Define Health Score parameters and increase customer advocacy
- Conduct QBRs for all customers, especially strategic and enterprise logos to understand customer sentiments, key concerns, showcase Quark's achievements and business roadmap
- Define and Optimize Customer Life-cycle by mapping customer journey and standardizing intervention for each point in journey
- Manage Customer Success Activities On-boarding, Training, Renewals
- Measured Effectiveness of Customer Success by defining operational metrics of the team, establishing system for tracking metrics
- Metrics were regularly presented to the executive team and the board to walk-through the current customer health and plans to improve the health of those lying the RED zone
- Created a highly motivated team of CS managers by upscaling current Technical Support Analysts and hiring the right candidates
- Provided regular training and conducted workshop with the new individuals to optimize their on- boarding
- Inspired Customer Success across Company by creating company-wide culture of customer success
- Also aligned with marketing, sales, product development and executive team around key metrics and objectives
- Team size managed was 8.
Director Customer
Success | RESILINC SOLUTIONS PVT.LTD
06.2018 - 02.2019
- Resilinc offers supply chain risk management solutions
- Bought on board to lead a team of 19 Customer Success Managers responsible for the day to day customer relationship and roadmap to driving product adoption and ongoing usage of products, while promoting customer satisfaction and advocacy
- Manage customer expectations for delivery of services through the leadership and coaching of key account team members and cross-functional department lead while overseeing a portfolio of 57 customers including Continental
- BMW, Cisco, Thermo-Fisher Scientific and Biogen
- Understand customer needs, thoughtfully helping business leaders to identify opportunities to grow and expand their engagement with the company
- Build and maintain relationship with senior stakeholders with key accounts
- Ensure key accounts achieve their business objectives using company’s software and services
- Engaged with Enterprise and SMB Customers for contract renewals, product up-sells summing up to 1.2 mn USD over the last quarter
- Drove a small project to drive a improve a dipping NPS into acceptable levels; understood customer pain points, assigned experienced CSM’s and implemented Get Health Program to nurture and monitor their progress along the program
- Designed a Customer Success workflow for a complete life cycle from on-boarding to Fully Proactive stage for customers This contributed to a smooth customer operation and better CSAT scores, smoother and satisfactory QBRs and EBRs from both Resilinc’s and the customer’s standpoint
Senior Customer Account (Program) Manager
VELOCITY TECH-SOL INDIA PVT.LTD, Velocity Technology Solutions, Inc
08.2015 - 06.2018
- Now Navisite) is a leader in enterprise and business application cloud services
- Hired to support customer’s transformation strategy through the management of cloud, on premise or hybrid implementation initiatives
- Worked with key stakeholders to ensure the successful deployment of key client projects while leading a large project team of 7 members
- Provided key input to senior-level business stakeholders during project phases
- Established and maintained relationships with business clients to ensure that their needs are articulated in business and technological terms
- Prepared proposals, responded to RFI, delivered business presentations to clients
- Involved in resource planning, architecture evaluation, technical direction, effort estimation, tracking, risk management, audit, proposing newer
- Solutions in Cloud and AWS and mentoring
- Worked on the commissioning and completion of SAP CLM Sourcing Upgrade from V7 to V10 & SAP ECC 6 EHP3 to
- EHP7 project operations and assisted engineers on-site to meet major deadlines for clients
- Recognized by the management for establishing Partnership with C-Level executives as well as aligning business IT strategy and Velocity strategy to seamlessly support customers in the Cloud Space
- Conducted online training sessions to new clients and led on boarding process to ensure success rate through 100% customer engagement.
IBM INDIA PVT.LTD
12.2004 - 08.2015
Lotus Notes-Domino Administrator
IBM India Pvt Ltd
12.2004 - 12.2006
- Hired to analyse business requirements and create design specifications for new applications and enhancements
- Accountable for Lotus Notes/Domino administration and monitoring
- Carried out user access and permissions administration, provided technical support, prepared documents and conducted knowledge transfer trainings for junior members.
SAP Solutions Consultant
SAP
01.2007 - 10.2011
- Joined the, BASIS Team, responsible for design and delivery of Enterprise solutions for IBM clients, Accountable for the performance and stability of the SAP platform in accordance with defined project timelines
- Led key SAP Basis/ ERP initiatives and provided technical administration as needed for upgrades, installations, refreshes, proofs of concept, backups, disaster recovery, capacity planning and other complex projects as needed.
Project Delivery Lead/Senior Service Delivery Manager
SAP
10.2011 - 08.2015
- Reporting to SAP Tower Head this position was accountable for coordinating all the SAP Technical activities & managed
- Cloud Services ensured the services are provided according to the agreed SLA while managing a 14-member team
- Participated in SAP related projects (releases and rollouts) and conducted requirement gathering, fit/gap analysis, CRPs, training, functional specification, testing, configuration, data conversion and solution governance
- Led projects for key clients including Coca Cola, Schneider Electric, Nansei-Sekiyu, Novo-Nordisk, Toray Battery-
- Separator Films
Education
Master of Computer Applications -
Dr.Ambedkar Institute of Technology
2003
Bachelor of Science - Economics
Kolkata University
1999
Skills
- Customer Success & Customer Onboarding
- Relationship Management
- Process Improvement
- Strategic Planning
- Engagement with Pre-Sales
- To close new logos/POC
- Business Process Improvement
- Strategic Account Management
- Stakeholder Management
- Hiring/ Career Development
- Team Management
Certification
- 1. AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner(CLF-01)
- 2. Microsoft Certified Azure Fundamentals(AZ-900)
- 3. ITIL v3 Intermediate
- 4. Strategic Management from IIM Kozhikode
- 5. Red Cross Certified CPR Professional
- 6. New Jersey State certified Emergency Vehicle Operator
Languages
Bengali
Bilingual or Proficient (C2)
English
Advanced (C1)
Hindi
Bilingual or Proficient (C2)
Timeline
Principal, Customer Success Executive
RED HAT INDIA PVT LTD
05.2023 - Current
Manager, Customer Success Architects
RED HAT INDIA PVT LTD
04.2022 - 05.2023
Director, Customer Experience Strategies
Oracle India
01.2021 - 03.2022
Director, Customer Success
CXWAI Technologies India Pvt Ltd(Firsthive)
01.2020 - 06.2020
Director Customer
QUARK SOFTWARE INDIA PVT. LTD
07.2019 - 11.2019
Director Customer
Success | RESILINC SOLUTIONS PVT.LTD
06.2018 - 02.2019
Senior Customer Account (Program) Manager
VELOCITY TECH-SOL INDIA PVT.LTD, Velocity Technology Solutions, Inc
08.2015 - 06.2018
Project Delivery Lead/Senior Service Delivery Manager
SAP
10.2011 - 08.2015
SAP Solutions Consultant
SAP
01.2007 - 10.2011
IBM INDIA PVT.LTD
12.2004 - 08.2015
Lotus Notes-Domino Administrator
IBM India Pvt Ltd
12.2004 - 12.2006
Master of Computer Applications -
Dr.Ambedkar Institute of Technology
Bachelor of Science - Economics
Kolkata University
- 1. AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner(CLF-01)
- 2. Microsoft Certified Azure Fundamentals(AZ-900)
- 3. ITIL v3 Intermediate
- 4. Strategic Management from IIM Kozhikode
- 5. Red Cross Certified CPR Professional
- 6. New Jersey State certified Emergency Vehicle Operator
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