The Hindu Business Line, May 23, 2007

“Get yourself to stand apart, Develop your own identity, Each of you is a product. The challenge is to differentiate and command the best that is available. Demand the best salary, the best job and the best company,” said Mr. G. Shankaran Nair, President – Corporate Strategy, Servion Global Solutions.

He was addressing students of the National Institute of Management Studies at the KCG College of Technology. He was speaking on the topic ‘Differentiator’ at a meeting organized under the aegis of the BL Club lecture series.

Every year five lakh engineers and one lakh MBAs graduate out institutions in the country. The US and Europe put together did not produce even half the number of engineers, he said.

Today, the world was full of paradoxes. While there were number of packages for CRM and Customer Interaction Management (CIM) available in the market, customer satisfaction levels were dropping. Similarly while salaries were on the rise, the performance and productivity of employees was not growing at the same rate.

Another requirement of industry was that employees thought like entrepreneurs. “If you can think like an entrepreneur, then you can differentiate yourself powerfully. To build a career, you need entrepreneurial quality,” he said.

Passion, a head for risk taking and knowledge were also differentiators. According to him, one could never make it to the top with a narrow domain expertise. “You need to have broader knowledge, which can only be gained by reading journals and magazines,” he said.

He added that organisations were becoming increasingly flat. Today, every department in an organisation interacted with its customers, unlike in the past when only the frontline sales team interacted with customers.

Among others present at the lecture were Dr. N. Sabaapathy, Principal, National Institute of Management Studies, Dr. R. Raja, Placement Officer, KCG College of Technology, and Ms. Vaishali James, Sr. Manager – Marketing, Servion Global Solutions.