A little more than 2 years ago I was presented with the opportunity of turn around my career. I received my offer letter from Greyhound Knowledge Group. I was offered to play a dual role – Analyst with Greyhound Research and Engagement Manager with Greyhound Knowledge Group. What then appeared to be an unknown territory turned out to be a goldmine of opportunities.
As a first-time analyst, the experiences at Greyhound Research have been diverse and to be fairly honest, quite challenging. However, what has been immensely rewarding is the personal growth on the back of consistently delivering cutting-edge Research & Advisory.
The Greyhound motto has been to ‘never say never’ – this has pushed me to constantly challenge myself. By virtue of this I have expanded my research portfolio and developed expertise in the domain of Enterprise Technology, in specific Global IT Spend Forecasting.
Playing dual roles enables me to look at Research & Advisory with an entirely fresh perspective. While this allows me to deep dive into a domain, it also requires to deliver operational excellence in both Research & Advisory assignments.
As Greyhound Knowledge Group stands strong at the 3-year milestone, its opportune to reflect on some personal milestones and learnings I have had along this journey of 2 years.
- Adapting to a non-conformist approach towards IT Research & Advisory and making it a way of life. What is commonplace at most other analyst firms such as co-branded research, white-papers et al. is redundant here (See Blog – Taking A Nonconformist Approach To The IT Analyst World). A manifestation of our unique approach is our independent research on focused themes under Enterprise Insights Pivot and Consumer Insights Pivot.
- Delivering insights that truly impact IT Decision making on a whole. We have an intrinsic understanding that IT decision making today has gone beyond the CIO and impacts other key stakeholders such as The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Chief Sales Officer (CSO) etc. (See our Premium Insights). Our constant endeavor is to deliver insights that are consistent yet contextual to business roles. Thus looking at Research & Advisory from a role-first perspective is innate to the way I manage assignments
- Always being agile and acting on market pulse to deliver innovative products. Greyhound Knowledge Group is truly an innovation lab. At the moment I dedicatedly work on developing the Global IT Spend Forecast tracker, which determines how IT Spends for the top global organizations are impacting the global technology ecosystem. Of our many other products, our latest tracker is focused on Workforce Empowerment Systems (WES), focusing on impact of vertical-specific processes and workforce-centric technologies on workforce lifecycle and overall business alignment.
Expert guidance from Sanchit, coupled with aggressive market tracking has resulted in inception of some cutting-edge and niche concepts from the house of Greyhound.
- With great offerings underway, we strive to deliver an experience and not just a service or a product. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with global clients and each time the endeavor has been to deliver in an agile manner and provide them end-to-end to support.
As an Engagement Manager, critical to be flexible with what your client requires and work in tandem to achieve common objectives. I get to work in collaboration with a dedicated Client Centricity team whose pure focus is to use value-driven, insights-based conversations with clients.
- An unwavering focus on delivering quality helps establish trust with your clients & research audience. Processes such as a 3-level quality check and peer-reviews from fellow Analysts & Engagement Managers are treated as our holy grail.
To add furthermore, our research team proactively engages in conversations to ensure research insight from Greyhound Research is carefully curated and verified before it goes out the market.
- Always keep your head above the water when in a tough spot, so that you can at least have a laugh about it. As a young manager in a young company, I have often been faced with grueling situations where I have had to consciously switch between the peer and the manager hats, as the situation demands.
While I working with aggressive deadlines, 48-hour shifts etc.; the only thing that kept me and the team positive was humour – for when you find humour in a difficult situation, you win.
As I look back at January 2014, Greyhound Research has been a great platform of learning and re-learning.
As Winston Churchill once said and something we truly abide by at Greyhound Research – “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
Here’s to always delivering bigger and better than the last time.
About the author: Manasi Parvatikar Manasi is an IT Spending Forecast Analyst with Greyhound Research and also serves as the Engagement Manager for Greyhound Knowledge Group. She manages global business and technology consulting engagements for the Greyhound Knowledge Group companies. To read more about her, click here.