Hello everyone.
Hope everyone is in great spirits and eager to start an exciting journey called "IIM".
Allow me to take this opportunity to share an exciting pre-MBA experience on Strategy, Sales and Marketing, which made me take a decision of pursuing MBA with IIM. The first organization I worked with was "Cummins", way back in 2011. Being an engineer, with virtually zero experience in marketing, I was entrusted to not only provide technical support (well, my cup of tea) but also be involved in improving business for Spare Parts and new engines in Jharkhand region. Well, it is quite obvious that initially I had to struggle with the project. With practically zero access to road, even cellular network in several customer locations, things were bound to become more complicated.
Let me first describe a bit what I did in Cummins, or what was the business of Cummins. Cummins is a US based MNC, which manufactures diesel and natural gas engines for a series of applications, like heavy trucks, mine trucks, power generation, marine, etc. Quite often, the units were stationary, like in case of power generators. Jharkhand region had a market mainly for power generators and mine trucks. The more I started to explore and ponder, the more I found that the poor sales was caused primarily due to an improper and unaligned distribution network. The field work gave me an opportunity to fully understand this requirement and work with cross-functional teams and convince them the need of efficient distribution network. A good network not only helps provide the goods to the customers, on demand, but also provide efficient service. To that effect, capability building of the team was also taken up by me to build the team. I also convinced the management, the need to increase inventory efficiently to drastically reduce the delivery time and increase efficiency. That taught me the need for inventory management and using tools to calculate and eliminate items having a low movement rate or critically slow moving, causing stress on our resources.
The efforts did increase the business overall, to the satisfaction of the management, but still, I felt that there was immense scope of improvement, and my lack of business knowledge was a hindrance. I did not know strategy, Porter's principles, Marketing Principles and several other concepts needed to enrich my knowledge and apply the same. That lack of knowledge and desire to grow and succeed in this field helped me take the decision to join the MBA course, that too from one of the Best Institutes in India - called the "IIM".
Now fast forwarding to 2016, I do enjoy my first year studying in IIM Trichy. I hope I am able to take this opportunity to learn, and I hope all of you take this opportunity to pursue your dreams and come out enlightened.
Wish you all the Best.