Where are they now: Jitender Miglani
During my last update sent to you on 17 June 2007, I shared with you where I stand professionally and personally. A lot has changed during the last one year. I have matured as a 'Market Intelligence' professional. There is a team of 6 people that I am looking after as a Manager. I have spent more than 5 and half years with HCL Technologies (http://www.hcltech.com/) now. I am providing Market inputs for high-level Business decision making. Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint are my most important tools now.
My team (known as Strategic Intelligence Wing) focuses on 3 core activities:
(1) Providing Market Inputs to our Leadership for ongoing Business planning and strategy development. The inputs are also leveraged for during Sales Review Meets, Analysts Meets, Offsites/Workshops etc. The inputs comprise of Market Trends, Market opportunities, Market Share Analysis, Competition SWOT analysis, IT Budget/Spending Outlook, IT Initiatives/Priorities, CEO/CIO Job Challenges, and future predictions of the market.
(2) Providing Market Inputs to the Marketing team to support their Marketing Campaigns, New Service Articulations, and developing New Value Propositions for the customers.
(3) Providing Proactive Account Intelligence for our Strategic Customers. Also, provide support for opportunities entered in our Salesforce system. The inputs are provided in form of presentations covering Customer/Prospect Business Landscape, their Competitive Pressure points, their Financial aspirations/pain-points, and their business strategy insights.
For generating all the inputs, we leverage a variety of analysts databases (such as Gartner, Forrester, AMR Research, IDC, Ovum) and company information databases (such as Hoovers, Factiva, Technavio, Datamonitor).
Because of all the initiatives I took to build Market Intelligence in the organization, I was given the Functional Guru 2008 award.
In addition, this year, I also got the responsibility of managing Industry Analyst Relations. This is a completely new and exciting function. The AR job involves growing relationships with Industry Analysts as they are important Influencers. They influence deals by advising the buyers on vendor scenarios. Our objectives with them are 3-fold: Insight, Influence, and Exposure. Analysts can provide useful market insights for business decision making. They can influence the buyer decisions by providing them vendor-specific inputs. Analysts also write reports about vendors that can serve as a useful independent third-party recognition of the vendor capabilities.
Now, a little update on personal front. My son - Aaron - is 2+ now. He has started talking and running. He keeps us occupied all the time. He is going to a pre-school, named Blessings. We recently got him a DVD with Nursery Rhymes. He loves to watch and listen those. My wife is in a Government job. Her job is based out of Delhi. So, its very difficult for us to move out and settle somewhere else. Though we can't know what will happen in future, settling down somewhere else seems tough.
