CIO profile: Cyient’s Pallavi Katiyar on why it’s important to bet on people

Pallavi Katiyar began her career as an IT consultant and now oversees a much broader portfolio as Cyient’s CIO. During her professional career she had the opportunity to play different roles: “There was never a dull moment,” she says.

Over the past 22 years, Katiyar has worked in various fields, technologies and industries which has opened up many avenues for her, from programming and product design to running large RFPs and SAP implementations. She has also been involved in supply chain consulting and supplier management and most recently has driven major infrastructure and cybersecurity transformation projects.

In this interview with CIO India, Katiyar talks about her management philosophy and how she has shaped her career.

CIO India: What was your greatest career achievement?

Pallavi Katiyar: I was very adventurous and didn’t hesitate to take on new challenges. This risk-taking and passion for problem-solving opened up an opportunity – an M&A initiative of a $21 billion company in one of my previous organizations. I led IT integration for two global business units that came together through this M&A route.

The two had very different corporate and infrastructure portfolios with few synergies. This made it complicated because both companies claimed to be more advanced. Even before you can delve into technical integration, try to align teams with the future landscape—what will be retained and what will be replaced. The integration took place across countries, so the execution must be effective as it affects hundreds of locations around the world. The whole chain of management aspects and communication became critical.

It was a three-year project and required the integration of the entire IT application infrastructure and security portfolio. It was the hardest and most complex program I’ve ever recorded in my life. I’m very proud of this achievement because it took me far beyond my comfort zone.

CIO India: What was the most difficult decision you had to make in your IT career and how did you make it?

Katiyar: Joining DuPont was probably the hardest decision for me. Before that I worked in IT services and the new role required me to move onto the business side. It was new territory for me. Things were going very well on the IT services side and professionally things were looking promising. At DuPont, I was tasked with setting up a delivery center for them in India, rebuilding capacity internally, and driving the consolidation of major suppliers. It was difficult to switch to the business side when I really had no prior knowledge in this field.

I don’t hesitate to take on new challenges, but after speaking with DuPont’s CIO, I felt more confident about taking on the new role. He had a very clear vision of what he wanted and was very passionate about it. That made it easier for me to make a decision.

CIO India: What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?

Katiyar: I learned how important it is to bet on people. I owe a lot of what I do today to my CIO at a previous organization. He trusted me and empowered me to take on specific projects and roles, which was a turning point in my career.

I learned the importance of user experience from another CIO I worked for. She was very keen to build a user experience in each project. Often IT functions are inward looking, bringing best-in-class technology but not necessarily looking from the user’s perspective.

I also learned a lot from Cyient’s CEO. He believes in investing in the future and never hesitates to do so. The more I work with him, the more I see the trajectory of technological growth. Some of the investments he made seemed a little far-fetched at the time, but those investments are giving us ROI today.

CIO India: What are the career mobility prospects of a CIO? What roles would you aspire to?

Katiyar: Today, CIOs work closely with business leaders and solve real business problems. This makes it much easier for CIOs to take on different roles as we have a good understanding of the business priorities, challenges, customer expectations, the competitive landscape and the commercial and governance aspects.

For me it’s more about the passion to solve business problems to enable better collaboration, higher productivity and performance. It doesn’t matter much if this is a business related role or if it is another role within one of the supporting functions like HR or Operations. It’s more about the problem and the type of challenge I need to solve that would define the future role I will take on.

CIO India: How are you preparing the next level of leadership for the CIO role?

Katiyar: Nothing is constant, not even our positions. Someone has bet on me and it’s important that I do the same. I have a four point mantra when it comes to people: challenge, trust, empower and empower.

The key is to identify promising individuals and take informed risks. You should be able to assess this person’s trends and development needs and help them succeed in their new role. And you need to give them extra responsibilities and push them out of their comfort zone.

CIO India: Did you encounter any unusual challenges during a project implementation?

Katiyar: When I joined Cyient, we were going through an SAP implementation. We’ve been SAP users for a very long time, but we implemented new features for project managers to get more real-time reporting on projects, resource usage, and invoicing. This required a significant change in the way a project manager traditionally executes some of these processes.

However, the teams struggled with the new processes and tools. I realized it was hampering our abilities, and the original goal of becoming more productive and effective was defeated. That’s when I decided to pause the project and went back to the drawing board – where do we see gaps and what needs to be done to fill those gaps? We have listed all the problems and requirements again and compared them with a roadmap. We walked managers through different aspects of the solutions, what to expect and what not, and then worked on the implementation to better align it with business needs.

It took us a good six to eight months longer, but the good thing is that by the end of this project, all project-related reporting came straight out of the system.

CIO India: What myths about technology, IT/IS management, digital transformation and the CIO role would you like to debunk?

Katiyar: Digital transformation requires a complete ecosystem shift — a complete transformation of how you do things from start to finish, and it often requires a change in culture and mindset. As CIOs, we need to do a better job of explaining to our stakeholders what it really means.

Let’s say you’re rolling out RPA to finance functions. The technology aims to automate repetitive tasks that people in the finance function may not be used to. They are used to working with Excel spreadsheets and really need to start thinking differently or RPA will fail. There needs to be a balance between what is being automated and how the person whose work is potentially being transformed needs to be rescaled.

CIO India: What is your key takeaway from the last two decades?

Katiyar: Don’t blindly chase others. There is no need to always choose the best in class or the most advanced solution. If your organization is not prepared for this, the chance of failure is much higher than expected.

I’ve been involved in a few projects that I’ve been actively involved in and my gut feeling is that the solution isn’t the right one for the company, but I haven’t been very vocal about it, or maybe I haven’t been able to express it at this time. I wish I had trusted my instincts and maybe created an awareness of them. But today I am very conscientious when it comes to identifying and selecting the solutions for my organization.

CIO India: If you weren’t a CIO, what would you be?

Katiyar: I am passionate about making education accessible to the less privileged part of society. I would have worked to create some solutions or use technology to make it happen. There is a high probability that I will still be doing this in a few years!