Introducing Ms. Uma Balakrishnan of Axcend Automation & Software Solutions

Manufacturing has traditionally always been correlated with the masculine gender - for being a tough job where men know best! It comes across as a genuinely pleasant surprise then, to meet a woman heading an organization that provides manufacturing companies enterprise IT solutions enabling real-time decision making, in short, advising manufacturers how to use information to their advantage.

Axcend Automation & Software Solutions or simply Axcend, is headed by Uma Balakrishnan, a BE Electronics and management graduate from IIM-B who has been with the organization since it started out as a partnership firm in 2001, became a private limited company in 2002 under the name of EISS and subsequently signed a joint venture with a Canadian partner in 2004 to take the Axcend brand to a new market.

What is Axcend all about?

Every business needs data - real-time measurements and key performance indicators for manufacturing metrics and analytics - to facilitate the process of decision-making. While such data was conventionally compiled manually, in the current competitive environment, internet-enabled global businesses need a more focused approach to data collection. Businesspersons now need to interpret and correlate business information with real-time authentic production information in order to take effective decisions and track assets such as inventories on a real-time basis.

Uma very practically gives an analogy of a 5 day cricket match versus a one day 50 or 20 over game - the latter require an entirely different strategy. The businessman / cricketer must be aware of the ball-by-ball asking rate to take field/batting decisions to ensure that operations are managed with agility and adaptability, instead of becoming a victim of historical information.

Sound entrepreneurial experience

Uma's work experience during the 1990's gave her a perspective on the emerging global business environment, and also taught her the value of constant learning. Uma's graduate degree thus followed in 2001, and added to the lessons she had already acquired from her years in business. She is quick to point out that business is largely driven by intuition and guts.

Uma believes success has a relative connotation in business, and prefers translating it as lessons learnt along the way. So she says whereas common sense, resilience and objectivity drive business, agility and the flexibility to respond to clients and the market enable you to shine. Further, people make all the difference in business, hence treating people fairly and respectfully - employees, clients, vendors or partners - is not a need or a choice, but a necessity and a must. Human limits should be constantly explored and tested, as we all have immense capabilities to be tapped and delivered - an ideal business environment should facilitate this.

Client-centered focus: No wonder then that Axcend's focus is client-centric, aiming to fit the needs of the client instead of being driven by a mandate of packaging all the product suites of a brand for the customer. The Axcend approach - in the course of proffering consulting and implementation in the space of real-time, decisive, adaptive manufacturing - is to weave solutions based on a combination of products/components that would best suit a client, after carefully considering their existing investments, their in-house support strengths, growth plans, strategic management objectives and interoperability to work within the IT ecosystem of the organization.

Axcend therefore offers clients its own framework which is based on the teams' industry experience - without emulating existing market models - customized to suit the clients' needs or else recommends third party product suites. Its end-to-end IT solutions affect both shop floor and top management and hence call for multidisciplinary capabilities such as engineering knowledge, industrial automation and controls expertise and IT skills combined with strong manufacturing industry specific domain knowledge and preferences.

The outcome of being early players

When the Axcend team started out in 2001, they were one of the early players in this space. In fact, as Uma says, "Probably a bit too early even for the Indian market and hence, our first two years went into creating market awareness of our services and the value proposition we offered."

Recently though, Uma has witnessed the Indian manufacturing sector being driven by a growth in exports and increased domestic consumption. This has opened doors in this space as a result of which quite a few MNC product companies and large IT companies have joined the bandwagon. But as Axcend delivers its decision-making solutions as its core capability, this niche focus has helped it face market competition.

Organizational DNA: The Axcend team started out as a self-funded organization, and aimed to grow as a corporate with formal management decision making process and systems. Uma believes this approach was in stark contrast to growing as a company driven by its group of individual owners. While it made the going more challenging and stressful, it certainly made their foundation much stronger. Moreover, it created an environment wherein capable young managers could be introduced and given an opportunity to grow Axcend beyond the shadows of the individuals who began the journey.

Axcend's marketing strategy continues to evolve, as the company seeks to meet its key challenges - holding its own and building recognition for its brand amidst MNCs and large IT service companies while continuing as a focused, small and agile organization in Bangalore. Also, to encourage domestic Indian manufacturing industries see beyond product vendor driven solutions to client-centered solutions offered by service providers such as Axcend.

While the team knows that its marketing budgets can never match the competition, it is confident that its successful client engagements and the value it has delivered will help create recognition for the Axcend brand.

Success!

In a way, a lot has already happened, as the company has grown from being a two member team in December 2001 to around a 120 member team. During this time, Axcend has served prestigious clients such as ABB, Cooper Bussman, HLL, ITC, Schneider, Suzlon, Titan...to name a few.

At the end of the day, how does it feel being a woman driving a competitive business? Uma expresses an uncertainty regarding the role gender plays in making business easier or tougher, even though she believes it does introduce an emotional aspect in business. This has helped her emphasize trust and fairness in all her dealings. Further, she constantly seeks long term relationships as opposed to short-term one-time gain opportunistic dealings - a trademark of a woman, is what we'd say...

Charu Bahri is a freelance writer and author of two books. She also writes funding grants and software for a charity working in the health sector.  

Issue BG72 Mar07

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