CORPORATE STALWART

Shaonli Mukherjee: I consider myself truly fortunate when I say that I am “self-made”-very humbly. I come from an educated middle-class family in West Bengal and had a very strict upbringing. My career journey started back in 2002, right after completing my university graduation. I started as a trainee customer response executive selling mobile phones for Reliance Infocomm. I had to move to Mumbai for this job and live all by myself at the mere age of 21. When I look back now, all that seems like in another life.

After spending a year in Reliance, I got an opportunity to join Wipro Limited. That is where I got the exposure to global customer solutions for the first time. My life took a 360-degree turn after I got inducted into the ways of thriving in global operations. I started as a Quality Executive, evaluating sales and marketing teams on business ethics and customer experience. Soon, I started leading the quality teams as a QA Lead and that’s when I got the exposure to real business operations while working alongside the operations leaders.

In 2005, I took up the challenge to move into an Operations Leader role at HSBC, managing smaller teams to begin with, and based on the continued success of the teams. I went on to manage larger portfolios within the banking sector. Working as a Team Lead and then as an Operations Manager made me realise how much I loved being with and working alongside people. My team became the primary motivating factor for me in my life, and I slowly started believing in “team” over “myself”.

I always wanted to diversify, understand and lead operations for various industries. Hence, after spending a good three years in the banking sector, I wanted to get into global IT and IT solutions. In 2008, I got a chance the join the big blue, IBM, leading operations for level 2 and 2.5 technical support teams. My journey in the IT industry started on a very high note when I delved deep into the solution types and started identifying and resolving several roadblocks that helped the team and the organisation to achieve their strategic and financial goals. I spent good seven-and-a-half years with IBM, and continued to strengthen my core business as well as people management capabilities. I grew from strength to strength at IBM from a people leader to a group manager-leading endto-end IT solutions for very large enterprise clients for IBM. My stay with IBM strengthened my Problem Solving, Stakeholder Management, Financial Management and Process Excellence capabilities. I was able to bring in breakthrough improvements in service quality and efficiencies at IBM and got recognised with the Service Delivery Excellence award twice. I was also awarded the first “Hall of Fame” award for dedication and commitment to the business and for always achieving scores that are higher than the country average in the Manager Feedback Program.

After gaining considerable experience in leading IT solutions, the industry that intrigued me the most was the growing trend in E-Commerce. I joined Amazon in 2014 and was Managing Operations teams for India Customer Service and in my short stint with Amazon, I was able to improve the overall customer satisfaction score index for the team by 40% and bagged the Best CSM award for Superior Team Performance. My association with Amazon strengthened my passion for excellence and customer focus to achieve business results. It also taught me to start with “Customer First” and then walk backwards while trying to solve any business problems.

In 2015, I ventured into IT Infrastructure Management as a Senior Principal Consultant with Genpact, managing end-to-end IT infrastructure for large clients. I directly worked under the CIO as the Leader for all IT infrastructures as a single point and executed process improvement/lean projects to streamline processes, increase productivity and reduce downtime for the customers resulting in a business impact of 14 million dollars in 2016. I always ensured the profitability of the accounts supported by effectively managing the PnL and driving several efficiency projects resulting in an overall PM of 51%. I transitioned and stabilised the end-to-end IT Service Delivery for Auto Plus account from the US to India and received an all-time high Net Promoter Score of 100% from the customer for excellent service delivery. This was recognised with service cheers points by the VP, ITMS Delivery and my teams also won the Zero Attrition Contest for 2016.

After gaining substantial knowledge in IT infra, I moved on to CDK Global in June 2017 as a Senior Manager—Operations with the purpose to build and lead the Virtual Implementation team in India for the first time. This was my first true experience in building and leading a software install team and the learning so far has been immense. In the last five years, along with my able leadership team, I have been able to successfully live up to the business expectations and bring in significant growth for CDK India. I have also grown from a Senior Manager to Director and then Senior Director at CDK; currently managing Implementation, Support, Enterprise Automation and Data Management teams in India. I set up the Virtual Implementation team with just one product in June 2017, and presently manage a portfolio of 40-plus products from India, in a span of five years, with a huge impact on the overall install cost. I also set up the first Robotic Process Automation team in India and automated the end-to-end installation process of the top selling CDK products through RPA, thereby reducing cycle time significantly and accelerating revenue recognition. I also established the COE for Continuous Improvement across all operations teams in Hyderabad and implemented several projects aimed at productivity and efficiency improvement.

"Being a People as well as a Process leader is not an easy job, and there are no shortcuts. It’s important for a people leader to have genuine intent toward the well-being of his/her team. As a leader, many times, I have faced situations where I had to balance people and business"

The leader with her teammates

CC: You have been a trailblazer at CDK, whether setting up the virtual implementation team or the robotic process automation team. What inspired you to take these initiatives and how have they helped the organisation grow from strength to strength?

It has been a fantastic journey so far, which is rich with learning and positive experiences. I joined CDK at a juncture of my life when personally, I was extremely vulnerable, treading through a very rough path. This was to an extent that everything that I considered to be my only strengths, was falling apart. Amidst all the chaos, CDK came across as a breath of fresh air for me, the reason to keep going and the motivation to pick up the pieces and shine again. Work became my only happy place, and I was determined to give my best in order to achieve excellence for myself and my organisation.

The expectation with which I was hired at CDK was to make India an integral part of the Global CDK presence and establish that trust and confidence to take on complex tasks and end-to-end capabilities to improve the time to value for our products and services. The vision was to not only transition the end-to-end setup work to India but also to standardise, streamline, codify and automate the installed processes and take them as close as possible to one-touch install. Once the processes were set straight, we introduced various automation technologies to reduce all possible repetitive manual tasks thereby, reducing the cycle time for installs. The Implementation team in India was able to bring in substantial efficiencies in all the installed processes that also helped to create additional capacity to perform more installs in less time.

At this juncture, the India team ventured into the Robotics Process Automation (RPA) space and we learnt the technology and the tool from scratch, with just four employees and a very able leader. There were major roadblocks and challenges that the RPA team had to face, in order to just create the basic foundation of trust for the team. However, the team never gave up and continued to work really hard to produce extremely impressive results. With the use of RPA, we were able to reduce the install time for top-end products significantly. This humble team, which started with four people is now an 18-member team, delivering close to 60 automation in a span of four years with an automation success rate above 90%. The sole inspiration for the teams and I, have been the sheer urge to prove our capabilities and establish lasting trust and respect for CDK India as a whole.

"In a corporate environment, it’s very important to be fair and unbiased, especially when one leads large teams. So for me, it’s a constant challenge to ensure that my actions are well thought out and assessed before they are implemented. That is why it’s necessary to always be transparent, and open-minded and not base any decisions based on first impressions"

CC: You have a knack for leadership and have held positions of leadership across a spectrum of organisations. What are the challenges that you have commonly encountered while donning the mantle of responsibility?

Being a People as well as a Process leader is not an easy job, and there are no shortcuts. It’s important for a people leader to have genuine intent toward the well-being of his/her team. As a leader, many times, I have faced situations where I had to balance people and business priorities very carefully to ensure that nothing gets impacted. Many times, there are business priorities which have to be met, however, not at the cost of the people getting burnt out. So, immaculate planning, always having a Plan B and being very close to the business really helped me overcome those situations.

Another challenge that I have faced in my career is dealing with ambiguities. As an Operations leader, we have to work on projects with minimum or zero details and yet create a sustainable and thriving delivery model. That is also a big challenge, and in the absence of any past data or history to draw knowledge from, sometimes it is a leap of faith that we need to take. We can slowly get better at this skill with experience.

The third challenge is managing perceptions. In a corporate environment, it’s very important to be fair and unbiased, especially when one leads large teams. So for me, it’s a constant challenge to ensure that my actions are well thought out and assessed before they are implemented. That is why it’s necessary to always be transparent, and open-minded and not base any decisions based on first impressions. Otherwise, it is very easy to fall prey to incorrect perceptions that can challenge your integrity.

Not having a leader that I truly looked up to has been another challenge. As they say, you can’t choose your bosses. In my career, honestly, I did not always have the privilege to have great and supportive bosses. Under those circumstances, I really had to struggle to make a mark for myself and my team. I could not pass on my struggles to my team either and had to really exercise patience, creative thinking and tenacity in order to pave my career path. In this regard, I am really thankful to CDK as I have got the chance to work for the most incredible leaders here, who have been my mentors and trusted me to do my job independently.

CC: Tell us about kaizen while also telling us how you have used this approach to rise professionally

As a leader, we have to truly embrace the fact that change is the only constant. And it also becomes our responsibility to ensure that we and our teams always “change for the better”. The basic principles of kaizen pretty much coincide with the key leadership principles and are also life skills. Teamwork, personal discipline, improved morale, quality of work and continuous improvement-I embraced all these principles wholeheartedly and also practised them earnestly throughout my career. That has made me a collaborative leader, rather than an autocratic one and also helped earn the trust of my team, my peers, my leaders and my stakeholders.

I have used the kaizen approach in all major decision-making in my career and have been able to successfully steer through major changes with my teams. Sometimes the easiest way to boost employee morale is to just spend a few minutes next to them, genuinely trying to understand how they are doing. Many so-called “people issues” can be resolved by just making a little time for people and spending that primarily listening to them, rather than trying to impress solutions.

The easiest way to improve the quality of work for the team is to make people understand how important their role is and what will be the effect on the organisation and the end customer if that is not done well. Most of the employees in any organisation do not understand the gravity of the roles they play. So, investing time in teaching people to understand “why they are doing what they are doing”, always pays off.

And finally, honing the ability to think and use an approach of “how to improve”, builds the mindset of continuous improvement in people. In my career, I have never, for a single day, felt that I have achieved the best of what my team or I can offer to the organisation. Sometimes, the simplest of behaviours can bring in major improvements, the key is to practice thinking.

"I have a bit of “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder” when it comes to problem-solving. I cannot thrive peacefully if I know that there is something broken and needs to be fixed. Some people believe that issues get fixed themselves if we give them time, but for me, they definitely increase my stress levels to an extent that I try solving them even in my dreams"

CC: Are you a born problem-solver or have you acquired problem-solving skills over time, given your corporate experience? Please share examples of your success stories with us.

Shaonli with her brother Indranil (extreme left) and
the caretakers of her pets

I am a problem-solver by behaviour, both in my personal and professional life. I also have a bit of “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder” or OCD as they call it when it comes to problem-solving. I cannot thrive peacefully if I know that there is something broken and needs to be fixed. Some people believe that issues get fixed themselves if we give them time, but for me, they definitely increase my stress levels to an extent that I try solving them even in my dreams.

To quote some examples-I faced major challenges while I was transitioning the virtual implementation work from North America to India in CDK. The usual sentiment that people had was that they will lose their jobs if the work is transitioned to India, though that was never the leadership vision. Ensuring that the right training gets imparted to the team was one of the biggest problems that I had to overcome. My problem-solving skills come into play every single day to address complex business issues, infrastructure challenges, conflicting people behaviours, and sometimes, unreasonable business targets. Being a problem-solver is kind of a life skill for me when it comes to furnishing my job responsibilities, and I cannot isolate one single situation where I had to particularly use it. This has definitely helped me to stay on top of my business and people priorities, harness the best of innovations in the teams and create a culture of problem-solving in which people continue to push their limits to achieve excellence and grow.

CC: Provide us with an insight into your initiative for the establishment of COE at CDK. What are some initiatives taken here?

I have established the COE for Virtual Implementation, RPA and Continuous Improvement at CDK. To be honest, when I started working on these, I never really imagined that they will scale so big and get successful over a period of time. Instead, I planned and executed each step with a lot of passion and tenacity to ensure that I am able to produce the best quality in whatever gets delivered in my teams. Though there are numerous practices that work in tandem to create success, I introduced a few initiatives and then my teams embraced wholeheartedly to achieve the phenomenal results. A few of them include a Performance Management System (including the PMS scorecard), ensuring regular governance and two-way feedback, by setting up an ongoing governance model with all the necessary teams and stakeholders. It also acts as a forum to openly discuss wins, challenges and roads ahead. I have also actively worked towards employee engagement and recognition as well as strengthening the leaders.

CC: You have an army of dogs. Tell us about that. How do you look after them with such a hectic job?

I am an avid animal lover, and I inherited this trait from my father. Since my early childhood, I have always had pets in my house, and I simply cannot imagine living in a house without my pets. I am an active animal rescuer and have saved several frail and injured animals throughout my life, even when I was a small kid. To be able to relieve their pain and suffering gives me a sense of immense joy and contentment. You can say animal welfare is my refuge. That is how I ended up having more than 20 pet dogs in my house, as it is not easy to always find good homes for the rescued dogs. Right now, I have 17 of them, and they are my army of little mischievous cuddle bugs that constantly give me the power to carry on with my hectic schedule. They love me unconditionally and fill my life with positivity and happiness. It definitely takes a lot to provide for them and take care of them, however, the true love and loyalty that I always get in return are simply priceless. My mornings are usually spent grooming, feeding and spending time with them, and my weekends are completely dedicated to them.

"I am an avid animal lover, and I inherited this trait from my father. Since my early childhood, I have always had pets in my house, and I simply cannot imagine living in a house without my pets. I am an active animal rescuer and have saved several frail and injured animals throughout my life, even when I was a small kid"

CC: You have a special performance at Convergence-family day (CDK Internal Event) with Company’s MD. Provide us with an insight into that.

With her pet dog, Olive

I am proud to call myself a key member of the CDK Convergence, our family day annual event’s core team and since the last three years, I have also had the opportunity to sing alongside my leader and India MD, Mr Arvind Chaturvedi in these events. It has been a phenomenal experience and I am fortunate that all the employees and their families have loved our performances each time. It is indeed an honour for me to get this opportunity. The last-minute rehearsal and practice sessions are always intense, but such fun. Arvind never made us feel that he is the senior-most leader in India, rather he was like any other participant, rehearsing along with us, correcting each other’s mistakes and laughing aloud at our jokes, which made the atmosphere even more fun and enjoyable.

CC: What role do you play in the CDK Unplugged band?

I am a singer and I love music. CDK Unplugged is that avenue for me, where I can indulge in pure bliss while enjoying the incredible performances by all the members of the band. In the initial days, I worked along with a couple of my peers to select the members for this band and give it a name and identity. Though I am not always able to make a lot of time these days to attend every jam session, however, I ensure that for any big events I work with this group to share ideas, select performances, conduct auditions and sometimes also perform at special occasions.

CC: You are a strong believer in Inclusion & Diversity (I&D). How do you ensure this at CDK?

I am a strong believer in inclusion and so is my team. At CDK, Spectrum-All Inclusive, our I&D program helps foster a culture of inclusivity in our teams and always works towards achieving a sustained balance in our I&D metrics. Currently, my teams comprise of 38% gender diversity population and it has seen a 3% improvement since December 2021. Our overall score on inclusion initiatives stands at 9.5 out of 10 in the weekly Peakon engagement survey. A few things that my team and I constantly work towards include a key focus on hiring and retaining diverse employees, ongoing coaching and mentoring for the diverse employees, I&D connect with Women Employees from India Customer Delivery and Support (ICDS) to share their experiences and career journey, challenges or any help needed, connecting with women with kids below five years to understand challenges/help needed in return to office plan, rolling out Idea/Feedback I&D box, mentoring on work-life balance and leadership talk series.

CC: With so much on your plate, what keeps you going?

To express in very simple words-my team keeps me going. I consider myself truly grateful to have such a wonderful team that is so energised, aligned and dedicated. They motivate me every single day and I learn a lot from them. I would have never achieved even half of what I have been able to if I did not have such a strong team supporting me at all times. The ICDS leaders who report to me are the best leaders that I could have ever asked for and they complement each other with the unique skills they bring on board. Their relentless efforts to excel, strong skills and capabilities, passion to deliver nothing but the best, openness to give and receive feedback and above all the intent to be there for each other at all times, keeps motivating me to become a better leader and a human being. I am truly thankful to CDK Global and my team for keeping the trust in me, believing in my efforts and ultimately giving me the best environment to work and grow in life.

Leading the Leaders

Beyond work, Shaonli champions the inclusion culture and is a passionate animal lover. She shares her journey to becoming the corporate stalwart that she is today...

"In the last five years, along with my able leadership team, I have been able to successfully live up to the business expectations and bring in significant growth for CDK India"

-Shaonli Mukherjee

Corporate Citizen: Your career trajectory has consistently moved upward through the years. Take us through your professional journey.