Be your authentic self and not look forward to becoming someone else in life: Ruchika Rattan, Aspect Software

Ruchika Rattan, Business Manager, Workforce Optimization & Cloud, South Asia, Aspect Software

Please tell us in detail about your current role at Aspect.
In my current role at Aspect, I am responsible for driving sales and business development initiatives for workforce optimization and cloud portfolio for the South Asia region.
In the last one and half years, my regional scope has expanded to include India, the Middle East and subsequently, the whole of South Asia. This has given me a great opportunity
to learn about different business environments, work cultures, and people across diverse geographies. I have traveled like never before, with hectic work schedules to manage, but the enriching experience including customer workshops, marketing events, one-on-one customer meetings, etc, have made it all worthwhile. Talking about my domain of work,
which is referred to as ‘customer experience’; I have been connected with this theme since the very beginning of my career. It always resonated with my inner self and slowly became
a huge drive within me in the form of ‘Customers First’ attitude, for all that I do each day. I can still recall the talk delivered by the CEO of the first company that I worked with, about
more than ten years ago. He spoke about “Customer Responsiveness” as a concept at length and I clearly remember I was in total agreement with every word he had to say.

I firmly believe that customer is truly the king and will always be. Not only do customers patronize us, but they trust us to deliver the best solutions for their business. We are therefore, duty bound to add value to their business and be responsive to them in all situations, come what may.

How has your journey in the IT industry been so far?
‘Exciting & Enriching’ are two words to describe my journey in the industry so far. Over a decade ago I started my career with two job offers in hand and it wasn’t hard at all for me to decide and stick to the ‘Enterprise Communication’ space. I have always been clear about things I want in life and that helped me make a decision visa- vis job offers.

The first four years of my professional journey helped me imbibe two important personality as well as work traits—be ‘hands-on’ instead of ‘hands-off’ and ‘make no excuse’. Personally, I spend a lot of time preparing for any initiative or assignment by researching as in-depth as possible and getting hands-on if needed, followed by focused execution with no excuses.

The next two years were spent with a telecom company where I continued to unlock my potential. I got the opportunity to explore myself in a role which had product and sales responsibilities clubbed together. This phase gave a deeper purpose to my passion
and that converted into a stronger inner drive—to make a valuable difference to my customers’ businesses. The third phase of my career was with an OEM where I managed global accounts from the frontline as part of the global sales team. This was about uncovering my strengths and weaknesses clearly and quickly.

I saw some huge successes, won accolades throughout for managing top customers, and this journey did transform me in many ways. CXO engagement, Internal cross-functional
engagement, managing sudden difficult situations with customers, internal and external conflict handling, etc, all of that came my way as key experiential learnings.

I became part of Aspect Software one and half year ago & Learning continues…

Can you share some experiences from your initial years at work? What qualities helped you evolve?
The biggest strength is my inner drive to accomplish tasks at hand in the best possible manner and a constant urge to look for new business challenges and to be able to solve them. The important thing is that the whole journey of overcoming a business challenge must bring some business value to my organization’s customer base and ultimately impact its business positively in both soft and tangible ways.

I remember my second year of work in a technical profile. I was posted in Mumbai to assist one of the most complex and bigger ongoing deals for the organization. A solution had
to be built in terms of a 5-year plan incorporating techno-commercial details for all five years. The deadline was short—the request came in the evening and had to be turned around the next day morning. I resisted initially since it seemed a bit impossible to work the whole night through and complete the task at hand. Besides, I was scared that I would commit mistakes. I did not wish to go that extra mile for work, since I was exhausted after having worked the entire day. I was unable to understand my customer’s urgency. So, my sales person convinced me to take a break, grab some tea, and take a deep breath. Being at the frontline, he made me realize that we had to get this done in the best interest of our own business and that of our customer.

This step of alignment was key for me. We started and put together the whole business plan by 5:00 am the next morning. My sales person and I worked extremely long hours on this plan and I must mention here that this wasn’t driven by a mandate by our management. This was a call that the two of us took in the interest of business.
This experience inculcated the ‘never say no’ attitude in me for a lifetime, especially to difficult work coming my way. I would actually look for challenging work now. The feeling of achievement I experienced, once the techno-commercial 5-year plan was completed, was very different from other projects I had done till date.

Do you see women leaders in IT facing tougher time than their male counterparts? What are the major challenges for women in leadership roles?
I feel everyone faces challenges, irrespective of gender, role, or organization. The nature of challenges vary for men and women but so do strengths and weaknesses as well the ability to deal with them.

Today, women have a well-deserved opportunity ahead of them across verticals, and I think we all must rise up to it; forget gender differences and take all challenges head-on. The key is to keep faith in oneself and just keep moving ahead. Just like we do not give up on our personal situations, we must not give up on professional ones either. Situations were never easy and will never be easy but that’s the real challenge and we must look forward to challenges to be able to evolve as professionals and more importantly as humans.

The only sincere advice I have for everyone is to be your authentic self and not look forward to becoming someone else in life. We must idolize experiences, not people. Ensure, we retain our own unique identity while we continue to draw from our own and others’ experiences.

Can you share any interesting experience or personality that has inspired you in your professional journey?
Experiences have always inspired me personally and professionally. I remember, I was new to an organization and had just closed my first deal country-wide. Accolades and appreciation were pouring in from all over. Interestingly, the deal ran into some trouble because of total non-agreement between customer and our legal team on a few legal contractual clauses.

I had set up a call with all the key stakeholders including CXOs from the customer end and from our side. The call started and few minutes into the call, it wasn’t going anywhere. The CFO from the customer side got agitated and made some irresponsible statements, leading to total silence on the call. I was new to this organization, new to sales, and was conducting a CXO call for the first time. For a second, numerous thoughts ran through my mind—should I disconnect the call, should I counter the customer leading to potential order cancellation, should I ask my legal to just stop talking altogether and log him off, etc. I finally broke the awkward silence of almost 20 seconds, pushing customer back on his remarks and undue asks, requesting the customer’s patience and composure to move forward. For first time, I said ‘no’ to a customer and I wasn’t sure if I was right. Customer gave me that assurance.

The chief marketing officer from the customer side immediately apologized on his company’s behalf. Following this, the legal issues were amicably resolved within twenty minutes on the same call, and the partnership was sealed.

The key takeaway—most often than not, we all run into difficult situations and if those are first-time, we struggle to make right decisions in that moment, especially when there are important things at stake. But it’s okay to push back and say ‘no’ to unreasonable demands and behavior of other party. It’s important to balance your organization’s esteem and customer responsiveness, and believe me, customers will respect that.

What is your advice to the female IT professionals trying to find their way to the top?
I will share with you the principle I have always followed in life—never try hard to find your way to the top; it’s personally too distracting for me. Focus on the task at hand and give your best to the same. Let your creativity, ideas, energy, passion, hard work, and commitment flow into this task at hand and believe me the world will take you to the top.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s important to set long-term goals in life to reach your desired destination that most people refer as ‘top’, but hard coding them and chasing them each can be distracting and exhausting. It prevents me from being the best at what I have to do today, right now. Just give your best each day to each task.