Our Operations And Us
Skillspan is an organization focused on imparting ‘closing’ education for the entry-level work force in the BPO Sector and upgrading the skills of existing personnel. It is a vocational centre of excellence for teaching cross board business process skills and helping fresh talent to quickly and effectively adapt into the BPO industry. It is important to remember that our course material (of which we hold the IP rights) is taught neither at the under graduate level nor in management schools.
Skillspan is primarily the brainchild of a group of IT and ITeS professionals who have exhaustive experience in both setting up and running mid- to large- sized BPOs especially in the field of Data and Non-Voice centres. Skillspan continues to work very closely with the BPO industry on the development of the courseware.
People at Skillspan >
Jeyadev Parthasarathy Director
A people’s person – he has been very closely involved with the people’s aspect of the BPO Industry through Footprints (see below)
Professional Details
November 2001 to date: Started Footprints, an Executive Search with specific focus on the Senior Management Assignments and Consulting and Advisory Services with specific focus on the BPO and IT Industry.
April 1998 to date: Director, Quadrangle Consulting Services Private Limited – Started an HR consulting services firm with a professional from the industry. Quadrangle consulting is a 6-consultant professional services company offering services in HR Practices in the BPO Industry, ESOP, Performance Management Systems, Job Evaluation and restructuring, etc.
December 1997 to October 2001: Managing Consultant, Quadrangle – Started an executive search organisation servicing selected clients in the Financial Services sector and Start-ups with end-to-end people requirements. Also managed and organized training programs in time management, entrepreneur management, sales and marketing skills. Merged Quadrangle with Info Edge India Pvt. Ltd. (Naukri.com) in October 2000, was the Chief Executive of Quadrangle for a year and exited in October 2001.
Director and CEO, Centre for Image Management Studies – a professional institute offering a 1 year fulltime Post Graduate Diploma in Image Management. Besides the full time Program, CiMS offered Education and Training Programs in Public Relations, Advertising, Journalism and other Communication related areas.
November 1994 to November 1997: Country Head, Executive Access (I) Pvt. Ltd. A three-year mandate to start and develop operations of a leading Asian Headhunting company in India. Started one of the first International Headhunting Search Firms to enter India from a 2-consultant team to a 12-consultant organisation during the 3-year retained mandate. The focus was on Senior Management Searches in the Financial Services, Media, Technology and Telecom sectors. Executive Access was the leading headhunting company in India in 1996-97 having executed over 50 senior management searches in its 3 years of operations.
January 1988 to date: Started as an Entrepreneur and was Head Finance and Marketing up to October 1994 in Value Line Interiors Pvt. Ltd. and Blue Chip Technologies Limited
The partners look after the business operations till date.
Between May of 1982 to November 1987 he has worked with leading IT manufacturers such as Wipro Information Technology Limited and Hindustan Computers Limited.
Educational Qualifications:
1985: Post Graduate Program in Business Management, XLRI Jamshedpur
1982: B A (Honours) Mathematics, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi
Pranav K. Singh Director
Has spend all his 20 plus years in the marketing of Technology product covering the entire gambit of hardware and commercial and telecom software in markets both in India and overseas.
After the completion of the VBITIL merger mandate for 3 years, has been a consultant since January 2003 retained by IT and BPO companies to advise on turnarounds and Market building strategy and execution.
In March 2000, Vickers Ballas Information Technologies India Ltd. (VBIT India Ltd.), a subsidiary of Vickers Ballas Holding Plc. Singapore, acquired and merged the Management Team and Business of Intrend Systems and Computers. In VBITIL as the Chief Marketing Officer (Software) as a Member of the Executive Core team reporting to the Managing Director. The responsibilities included marketing & sales, MIS reporting, Recruitment and training of sales personnel and team building, Market development, start-up marketing activities required before the launch, managing the sales cycles assisting the team from start to finish, Closing large contracts, Receivables Management, Post sales customer co-ordination and Overseas re-seller handling
In the overall functioning at VBIT for a period of close to two years has been largely working on brand building of the organisation. Has planned and executed direct sales of the two major products namely CMS and RMS.
After the sale of Computer City in June 1989 launched Intrend Systems Pvt. Ltd. & Intrend Computers as a Promoter Director.
These companies were set-up with the concept of forming a VAR based service organization capable of offering complete solution to its end users. The organizations focus was to offer complete hardware and software solutions. This was later extended to the set-up LAN’s and field level maintenance. The Functions and Responsibilities covered were Sales and Marketing of hardware and Software Products, vendor co-ordination for products procurement with every major IT product distributors like IBM, HP, DB , Microsoft controlling the support and service team for hardware, Co-ordination with government agency such as Income Tax and Sales Tax, Responsible for the setting up of complete dealer channel in North, West and South India for a US based organization for PCMCIA products and recruitment endeavors.
In May 1985, as a member of a start-up team, launched Computer City (Div. of Pearl Digital Systems Ltd.). Computer City was among one of the first retail cum field sales outfit in Delhi. As Sales and Operations Head, was responsible for the complete sales, support and collection for the organisation.
From 1980 to 1985 worked in Front End Sales in the leading IT companies in India, HCL, Televista and NELCO, from Sales and Marketing Executive to Senior Area Sales Manager.
Education
1985: Post Graduate Program in Business Management, FMS University of Delhi
1979: B A (Honours) Economics, University of Delhi
Rohit Arora Shareholder
Rohit Arora has over two decades of experience in business process outsourcing, investment banking and management consulting. He has advised several Fortune 1000 corporations on their India entry strategy including identification, negotiation and selection of joint venture partners.
Rohit Arora is the founder of AR Credit Information Services, a Business Process Outsourcing company focused on the domestic BPO market. This company has been providing services to leading multinational banks and telecom companies for about 17 years. The services range from underwriting of mortgage loans and credit card applications to providing both inbound and outbound customer services. He is also the founder of EMR Technology Ventures, a BPO company that services global customers. EMR commenced providing services to international customers a few years ago and has over the years brought in the benefits of its strong domain knowledge and process improvement skills to move up the value chain from simple data capture processes to complex decision making processes that require adherence to multiple policies and at the same time use discretionary powers.
Rohit has served as Managing Director of AIA Capital India Pvt. Ltd, (Member company - AIG - American International Group). He was responsible for setting up AIA Capital in India. The company was engaged in providing investment banking and corporate finance services to corporations in India and overseas.
Prior to that, he was a consultant with A.F.Ferguson & Co. (former correspondents of KPMG in India), where he gained exposure to management consulting especially in the areas of systems design / implementation and organization studies. During the course of this assignment, he handled consulting assignments for the World Bank, Indian Armed forces, MNCs and large Indian Public Sector Corporations.
Rohit Arora is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India
Akshay Saluja Shareholder & Advisor
Part of the start-up team at EMR, Askhay has been the head of operations since 2001. Having designed and implemented a robust delivery platform, Akshay has led the delivery team at EMR to overachieve on SLAs, providing the necessary fuel to EMR to penetrate further into the market.
Managing a host of processes under the verticals of healthcare, expense management, mortgages etc., Akshay and his team have designed, transitioned, improved and successfully delivered processes as an off-shore outsourcing unit to Fortune 500 clients in the US, while maintaining consistent metrics and impeccable track record on information security and end-customer satisfaction.
Two years spent with A R Credit at the outset of his career saw him handling multiple processes on credit cards, mortgages and other retail financial products with India’s first and world’s leading MNC bank. After successfully establishing the BPO practice with A R Credit, Akshay joined the Indian arm of Bausch and Lomb Inc.
What followed was a very rich 10 year stint with Bausch and Lomb which among other things, saw Akshay realign the entire accounting and reporting framework with the parent to match the altered status of the company as a subsidiary, work closely with the shared services centres providing accounting services to Bausch and Lomb globally and also be a part of the team that led the lengthy and complicated accounting for the divestment of the sunglasses business (Ray Ban) in India to Luxottica Inc., later heading the finance function for the same in India.
A graduate in commerce from the University of Delhi, Akshay is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
Other areas of expertise include business planning & analysis, business process re-engineering, implementation of ERP projects and balancing the demands of two lovely children with all his travelling around the globe.
The core team is then backed with what we have termed as SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTISE. They are responsible for the design development and delivery of the courses.
Ravi Ramakrishan
SME on the ADMC course, Advisor
Ravi Ramakrishnan is the CEO of and Consultant for of RvaluE Consulting, an organization recently founded by him with the mission to enable ‘Realizing Value through BPO ’.
A trained Chartered and Cost Accountant by profession, and a qualified Company Secretary, Ravi has about 25 yrs of experience as a Finance and Business professional, the last 7 being with American Express at their pioneering global captive F&A BPO Centre at Delhi as Vice President & Business Leader. He has enabled the growth and globalisation of this Centre (now 1000+ people) leading large global and local teams. He has been directly responsible for creating ‘global centres of excellence’ for Accounts Payable, Accounts Reconciliation and Statutory Accounting & Tax Accounting, through migrations (about 500 FTEs) across all regions of the globe, from Australia and Japan to US and Canada. Over these years, he has lead several global projects with successful Change Management capabilities for Y2K Compliance, Shift Work, Metrics, Business Value, General Ledger Management and Sarbanes Oxley 404 Implementation. He has successfully applied Six Sigma for Quality and Process Reengineering to achieve significant cost saves, and is himself a certified Green Belt under the Six Sigma program of American Express.
Ravi started his career with Hindustan Lever Limited, Mumbai (subsidiary of Unilever, UK), and has served in a wide range of industries – FMCG , Engineering, Plantations, Automobiles and Financial Services in multi cultural, multi company , multi divisional operations environment, including CFO and Controllership responsibilities. His rich experience over the last two decades extends to International Business, Sales & Marketing, Mergers, Acquisitions and Disinvestments, Dealing with Financial Institutions & Banks, Treasury & Capital markets and Corporate Planning, besides global leadership in BPO F&A Business
Ravi has relationships with key Captive and Third Party BPO Companies in India, providing consulting services to US Corporations including Amex. Ravi has expertise in Outsourcing related ‘Data Verticals’ like F&A , Payments , HR and Admin processing activities . He will focus his consulting in ‘Realizing Value, Strategic Value through strategic reviews for outsourcing, Client entry to India ,Off shoring options including Start ups / Acquisitions/ Business Partnerships, Vendor Delivery Assessments and Organizational Structuring, Operational Value for Functional excellence thro Transition, Metrics for effective service delivery , Control Architecture, and Sarbanes Oxley Compliance, and Information Value through identification of cost save opportunities to achieve better revenue to Client. Ravi is supported by professionals to provide speed and quality service to Clients.
During 2003, Ravi has enriched his BPO experience with a formal training in the eSCM– eSourcing Capability Model, the emerging global standard initiated by Carnegie Mellon University for the IT Enabled Services Industry, soon to participate in some of the pilot evaluations. Ravi has taken sessions on BPO at the Indian School of Business (ISB) with Professors from Carnegie Mellon as well as Wharton Business School. He has assisted the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India in bringing out the professional development publication on BPO for the accounting profession and has been a speaker in seminars focused on BPO.
Ravi’s brings unique value to Clients in the BPO space through his global exposure, strategic/ operational experience in BPO, and comprehensive professional expertise of Finance / Business in multiple industries as part of Senior Management teams with successful change management / leadership skills.
Ashish Kapoor –
SME on the BPO Fundamental Studies, Advisor
Ashish Kapoor worked for 4 years with an organization which provided Value Added Telecom Services in the country. These value added services were licensed and launched first time in India through the Department of Telecommunication.
Subsequently he was involved in the setting-up of these similar services in the metros when the basic telecom service provider Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL), had
launched Premium Rate Services first time in India.
For the last five years has been extensively involved with the Outsourcing Industry. Ashish’s association with the industry has been almost from its inception. He has call centre industry experience in working with both the Australian and the U.S. markets. On the Australian side he worked in Outbound Telesales and Market Surveys. Subsequently he joint GE Capital and worked on various processes such as Customer Care for Private labelled Credit Cards.
In the year 2001 Ashish moved to the Transaction processing side of the BPO and has gained rich experience with the Insurance and Healthcare Industry. Currently he is working on processes for servicing the Healthcare Industry. These processes range from data capture, claims adjudication and subrogation services. He is actively involved in process transition, automation and implementations of various data security measures and certification. |
