Ajay Thakur

Based out of Long Island, NY, I am responsible for one of the largest clients of Hitachi Vantara for more than 5 years. My day to day responsibilities include working very closely with the client Chief Information Officer (CIO) and his direct reports, enabling business growth by providing strategic advice and consultancy, all the while making sure the Hitachi Vantara team is effectively delivering on the service delivery objectives committed to the client's IT organization. 

Following are the key experiences that I offer:

• Understanding complex business problems from a variety of angles and providing appropriate solutions
• Multi-cultural experiences, spanning across several regions
• Insights into realities of managed services 
• Dynamic combination of sales and delivery, aiding clients to analyze the business goals and deliver with combination of services, process and business solutions

As the senior services leader within the Long Island office, I’ve served as the account leader for numerous clients with responsibilities including, but not limited to: 

• Accountable for overall client account profit and loss financials
• Relationship Management with client executives from business and IT organizations. 
• Developed strategic roadmap highlighting portfolio of Hitachi Vantara solutions and the capability to provide value to clients.
• Align internal resources to support opportunity development and project delivery in support of client objectives. 
• Partner with multiple Program Managers to identify and leverage innovative proprietary products and solutions to meet the diverse needs of client programs. 
• Use innovative approaches to differentiate the Hitachi Vantara solutions and approach from the competition.
• Lead the development of a Solution Plan, including solution, scope, estimates, contingency, costs, schedule, delivery model, resource/sourcing plan, assumptions, and risks. 
• Serve as primary escalation to support individual track leads in significant re-planning effort during delivery. In particular, when there is scope change, or towards the end a project/ release, where significant re-planning is required. 
• Ensure process compliance and effective capacity planning in order to minimize the cost and maximize the benefits.

MANAGED SERVICES

During calendar year 2018/19, I oversaw the strategy and execution of a sales cycle to provide $25M+ of Managed Services application support to a strategic client.  This opportunity had been a company target for 10 years+, however my understanding of the client organization, their buying criteria, combined with technical understanding of the applications provided me the opportunity to highlight the value and savings that could be provided to the client. A coordinated and focused effort of the sales team enabled this 10-year sales cycle to be condensed to 6 months of active work with the client IT and executive leadership to align on the structures of the opportunity. 

BUSINESS EXPANSION

Over last 3 years have led the expansion of business scope at an existing client from 3-5 applications to a suite of 30+ applications across the Americas, resulting in an annual revenue of $45M per year.

Worked very closely with the client senior executives to propose a Managed Services Support in an area where we have never been involved and how it can be a win-win for both the client and us, in these difficult COVID-19 times. Resulting in a long term multi-million Managed Services contract.

FINANCIAL IMPROVEMENTS

Worked with client stakeholders across the organization to clear about $3M+ of pending invoices that had been past due for several months, before I took over the Account Executive role.

Worked with various client and internal stakeholders to convert key Managed Services programs ($8M annual revenue) with negative margin (-22%) at this client to a complete turnaround of a high positive margin (+25%) in 11 months