Purnima MenonExecutive Vice President & CMO of CSS Corp Published On: Wednesday, March 23, 2016 Views 2987

"Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans."

With more than 19 years of experience in Marketing and Corporate Communications, Purnima has held several crucial roles in the telecom and IT sector with a broad range of agency experience, including PR and advertising. She even has several honors and awards to her name, which surely highlight her prominence.

She started her career as senior account executive at Bates Clarion and is currently Executive Vice President & CMO of CSS Corp. Purnima is an alumni of Shri Ram College of Commerce (Delhi University) and a post graduate from Delhi School of Economics. In her spare time, she mentors aspiring marketers. CSS Corp is the global leader in technology support. Over 100+ clients, including Fortune 1000 enterprises, count on their expertise in supporting enterprise and consumer products, managing IT infrastructures (stand-alone, cloud or mobile-enabled), and deploying networks.

Please provide a brief overview of your product/ service.

Our services are primarily around 3 broad areas. The first is in tech support in the high-tech space. Which means anyone – an end customer or an enterprise, has any problem with a technology device, we can resolve it. The second area of focus is on Infrastructure management services, which revolve around providing services in the areas of Service Desk, Cloud, Security, and Data Center management, EUC etc allowing enterprises to be more efficient and optimized. The third area of focus is really on Carrier/Telecom services relating to technology deployments and rollouts around technologies such as LTE, CDMA, 4G, and 5G etc mostly in the US.

What inspired you to build the above product/ service?

We are in the business of providing support in the B2B and B2C context. Therefore all our services and platforms that we have created are built around building great customer experience and problem resolution. The key is to be able to predict a problem even before it has occurred.

What is your life mantra?

If it is meant to be, it is up to me!

What was the most challenging part of your journey till now?

Fundamentally client requirements are evolving and that is being driven by the end user expectations. The ability to provide a service at a point of pain is all very well and everyone does that. Using business technology, analytics and automation to address and provide a solution, even before a customer knows it has occurred are probably the most challenging aspect of driving customer experience.

How did you overcome those challenges?

It is extremely important to get client buy-in before you embark on any investments or strategic plans for large-scale transformation programs. Collaboration and Partnership are key to fill in the gaps or that we need to address. Above all, it is about driving business value to the customer so that they continue to remain engaged with us. That often is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity as well.

Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.

Investments have been largely in the space of developing platforms and joint solutions for our clients. Our business is very referenceable so we are constantly pushing the needle when it comes to making investments in client business to enable them to become even more optimized. The key is to stay on top of our game and we realize in some areas, we can’t do it alone. Therefore, we choose to work and collaborate with partners in the Cloud, Analytics and Automation space.

How do you protect yourself from the problem of Brain Drain?

Like every other organisation, we do have our share of brain drain. Keeping people motivated on new technologies is one way. Constantly giving them onsite opportunities and client facing roles also keeps the learning fresh and is a motivation factor. Technology tools and self-learning capsules help a lot of the motivated employees in enhancing their skillets at work. We do many technology led interventions, that help employees learn at work and in a manner, which enhances their productivity at work.

According to you, what are the three qualities an individual must have to achieve success?

Integrity, Hard Work and Positive outlook

Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?

All social media tools that enable collaboration are extremely exciting. We use Yammer for internal collaboration and it has worked extremely well for us. Personally, since I blog a lot, I use a lot of Linked in, Medium.com, Tumblr etc.

Share any one habit which you think makes you more productive.

Engaging with people outside of work provides me with fresh perspectives and often new ways of looking at a problem or situation that needs resolution.

Share any one habit which you wish to change in yourself.

Impatience!

Answer in less than 50 words

One tip to success:

I do not need 50 words. It is Hard work and Hard Work and more Hard work!

One mistake you believe every individual must avoid:

I believe in making mistakes because your biggest learning curve comes from the learning or unlearning from that situation

One most important lesson that you have learnt till now:

My Learning curve is a continuum and as long as I learn and keep my mind open, exciting opportunities come my way. So keep your mind open- you never know which way your next lesson may come!

What are your plans for next 3 years?

I believe in living each day so I don’t make any plans. Tomorrow is another day. Having said that I do hope to mentor people who have a desire to share and learn from each other. I love writing so hopefully I can dream of writing a book (maybe a fiction novel!)

If you get a chance to start your career again what would you do differently this time?

I honestly don’t know the answer. Maybe I could have been an artist or a sportswoman! I think life accords many possibilities. I just happened to go with the flow and learn from it!

What are your top three getaway destinations?

Italy, Corfu and Kerala!

Share a quote that inspires you the most.

“Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans” John Lennon. Live and be grateful for each day of my life.

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