Manohar Muralidhar
BI/DW Technology Consultant
Hewlett- Packard
Manohar Muralidhar is a member of:
The Journey: Early days to How I got here
I started my career as a Systems Engineer and soon moved up the ranks to
be a Technical Specialist.I made some strategically important moves in
my career. I moved to an IT consulting firm as a Senior BI
Developer/Analyst before landing up with a job of a Senior BI Consultant
at another top MNC. Im currently working as BI/DW Technology
Consultant. Working for Top notch MNCs in my career instilled a sense of
discipline and professional ethics along with the technological
aspects. My stints helped me understand the global onsite-offshore model
better and how a Global company can leverage its knowledge to execute
projects from multiple countries. At my present role, Im working on BI
Solutioning and BI Road mapping.
Decisions that mattered
One of the most important decisions was to take up a career in BI/Analytics.
The turning points
Change is inevitable. However, turning points have great power to change
the way we think, the way we live. Most inflection points will begin
with a single bold decision. Years ago I made a decision to make a
career in the Business Intelligence & Analytics space. It was the
inflection point that changed my life positively in many ways. I worked
longer and harder than any other time in my formal education. I took on
the challenge because I had the ownership in my decision. It validated
the thought that an individual is more motivated when he/she has a
vested interest in what he/she needs to achieve. The key is to recognize
when you are at such a point and do something about it. It all started
with a decision to further my career and marketability.
Work and Role: Then and now
I have moved into the role of Business Intelligence Solutioning, wherein
we as a team, cater to a lot of clients across different
domains/geographies, across a gamut of BI tools. In the past I have had
performed multiple roles from being a Developer to a Senior BI Lead to
taking up BI Architect/Advisory roles.
Two years down the line
I have set my vision to build a BI competency to be able to provide
service, an array of diverse businesses. Being a Technology Consultant, I
crave to use Technology to solve business and worldly problems.
What I learnt along the way
A couple of things which I have learnt in my professional life and
which I always keep in mind and advocate are: Be REAL, do what you love,
and always put CUSTOMERS/CLIENTS first. Listen and LEAD by being an
example. When I started my career almost a decade ago, we still had the
tendency of reading through the books before actually venturing into the
development of a code. We had to work with machines which were probably
a few times slower than the ones we have today. With advancement in
technology, everything is available as a pre-packaged solution now; be
it Developer Libraries or Tools (automations which can do the job of
millions of lines of code). Technology is pushing life towards more and
more sophistication. It does need openness for adaptability and
acceptability.
Trends to watch out for
Cloud BI and providing BI solutions as a service, is something which is
been talked and which will be the future. Big Data & Sentimental
Analytics is another field which needs a worthy mention here.
Data-on-the-go (Streaming Real Time Analytics) is also an upcoming trend
in the market.
My advice if you are starting out
My humble advice to starters is that whatever you do, do it to the best
of your abilities. Be authentic and keep an eye on every minute detail
of your work. Understanding how your contributions are aligned to the
strategies of the team/account/organization is imperative. Enhancing and
upgrading ones skills is mandatory to be successful in this era.
BI/Analytics is one of the hottest fields to be in and will be here for
the next few decades.
Must have skills in BI, as I see them
It is never an easy answer when we talk about domains because every
domain entices different kinds of challenges and interests. The Telecom
domain is something to watch out for. Retail Analytics, Customer
Analytics, MarketBasket Analytics are some of the new exciting things in
the BI Retail space. BI/Analytics using unconventional data and
unstructured data is also an upcoming big thing in the BI space.
Do we need certifications
Certifications to a great extent have enhanced my skill sets and also
have enabled me to contribute better to the work. Certifications are
always beneficial when the knowledge acquired is channelized and
utilized for the betterment of the tasks we do on a daily basis. There
are many certifications available in the market. TDWI offers very good
certifications which are recognized all over the world. All the big
players in BI – SAP, Oracle IBM and Microsoft have a stream of
certifications available which can be looked into,based on the
individual interests.
Books/Websites I recommend
TDWI website is one of the best. I attend a lot of Webinars from TDWI
and have found it extremely beneficial. The Business Intelligence
toolbox is a good place to connect to fellow technologists in the same
line of specialization. LinkedIn groups are also extremely useful as
they provide a great platform to connect and collaborate.Other good
websites to keep up with pace are: http://bi-insider.com www.gartner.com
I
have found these books to be very useful: Business Intelligence Roadmap
- The Complete Project Lifecycle For Decision-Support Applications by
Larissa T.Moss, Shaku Atre and The Data Warehouse Life Cycle Toolkit by
Ralph Kimball,Laura Reeves, Margy Ross, Warren Thornthwaite.
Last but not the least
"Think Tomorrow", the future is here!
