Graduate / MBA Essay Operations in Agriculture [3]

Armed with Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering, I began my professional journey as a RF Engineer in XYZ LTD. Since three years I have been responsible to manage the operations and plan the network for managed services wimax project as a Sr. Delivery Engineer. Although, farming has been my family business but most of my family members have migrated to different professions because of rising inflation and plunging profit margins in agriculture, but I think with professional approach and proper management, agriculture still can be the most profitable sector in India.

We own five hundred acres of agricultural land and a cotton processing unit in the cotton belt of India, on an average we grow thirteen quintal cotton per acre per annum; we store the cotton in warehouse and sell it in installments to the local traders, at an average rate of $90 per quintal whereas, same cotton after processing is sold at 1000% rise in international market. There is a pyramidal hierarchy of traders, starting from local to international traders.

Starting our own cotton trading firm, will allow me to interact with national and international market and will enable me to analyze and forecast the market demand, on which the scheduling and volume of cultivation will directly depend upon. The cotton from the farms will go to our own processing mill and then will be transported to respective national and international markets. The transportation and warehousing are the variables depending upon the volume of the crop.

I will able to utilize my current experience of process planning, handling supply chain, customer and vendor negotiations and team management. My ability to analyze and to lead from front will be essential to initiate the process.

The uniqueness about this trade will be reduction in gap between end consumer and farmer. The average international price for per quintal cotton is $900 and we get only 10% of the total selling price, the total average cost of mill processing, national and international transportation and warehousing charges result 65% of the per quintal selling price, dealing in large volumes will further reduce the charges on per quintal and increase profit margin. Our existing family network with the farmers and International traders from Israel will help me to expand the operations and indulge other local farmers and more variety of crops in the trade.

However, lack of finance and account management skills and knowledge of risk management will be potential hurdles. I need to learn about resource planning and factors of failures. My initial target will be to gain an Entrepreneurial experience and hone my managerial skill set. Being part of International MBA program will provide me an opportunity to develop a good international network with professionals from diverse background. I believe that, in the extremely competitive and dynamic environment it is important to learn to sustain the business for long period and an MBA program at XYZ will provide the right platform to gain necessary knowledgebase.

Graduate / Professional objectives (the telecom sector operations, India) - MBA Essay [2]

Discuss your short-range and long-range professional objectives. Why have you selected this career path? Be as specific as possible about the kinds of positions you seek. Include in this discussion the reasons you have chosen the particular program and major or concentration to which you have applied. What contributions do you expect to be able to make to your classes based on your academic and/or professional experiences?

I started my career as a RF planner in XYZ the largest independent telecom infrastructure company in India, my initial responsibility was of planning and designing the wireless network across India for Managed Services Wimax Project. There were many pending cases and I was under pressure to prove my knowledge and ability to perform, unknowingly this helped me to quickly get acquainted with the technicalities of the project.

While planning and designing the network, I was benefited by my past work experience and academic knowledge. I gradually increased my involvement in the different domains of project; I started to monitor the operations by ensuring the end to end delivery of the links within the stipulated TAT. Based on my work, sooner I was promoted as Sr. Delivery Engineer, and currently I am leading a team of 8 Engineers and indirectly leading 50 engineers and 70 technicians circle teams. My team is the centrifugal force of the project as we control coordination between NOC Team, Field Team, KPO Team, Inventory Team, Backhaul Team, Quality Team, Vendor and Customer. I am the single point of contact (SPOC) for the customer and vendor and therefore I have to monitor the flow of the project identifying the delay and cost optimization possibilities.

Wimax was relatively new technology for XYZ Presales Team to evaluate the finance and cost budget of the operations of project. Therefore some of the decisions were difficult to manage, especially rigid Target TAT of 2 days for end to end delivery of the link, at start we were missing our Target TAT by 5 days this had resulted in 2.3% revenue loss for the customer. I analyzed the time involved in each process and made some changes by empowering the field team to take the decisions for the field survey, due to this the Average TAT was reduced to 3 days. In last year first quarter our project incurred serious loss of 6.8% due to policy change by the customer and inconsistent demand for the links. Therefore our team devised a plan of optimization which ensured the reduction of CAP-EX and OP-EX by 3% and 10% respectively, this also decreased the repeat fault analysis to 1%, and 95% SLA was achieved. This Optimization Plan was not covered in the contract and hence has been an additional benefit for our company.

With increasing connectivity, huge consumer base is easily reachable; this is leading to international expansions of business. In following decade we will witness more meager and acquisitions, global expansions and Joint ventures. However, with diverse work culture and traditions implementing same business model in all regions is not possible. Hence, the role of operations manager is a key to improvise efficiency and to consolidate the business. Because he is responsible for managing and coordinating for technical aspects such as Technology Management, Supply Chain Management, Inventory Management, Resource Planning and Non Technical aspects such as Strategic Planning, Cost Optimization, Policy Making, Team Building. Considering my exposure to managerial work, academic and technical background, I believe that I should elevate my career to managerial level and gain an experience of managing the operations for companies such as Motorola, Cisco or AT&T.

While managing the project I realized that I need to understand and learn the operations more deeply. Our Project had incurred 6.8% of loss in the fourth quarter; the inconsistent flow of orders from customer was affecting our billing cycle of the project. However, I was involved in mitigating the effects of loss by proposing the conversion of wired infrastructure to Wimax, but I could not understand the cause of failure in projection and risk factor involved in project, cost of recovery plan. While managing the supply of material (Technical and Non Technical Material), in all circles I was able to reduce the delay time by substituting the central vendor to local circle vendor, but to identify the delay on the large scale projects need to understand the utilization of tools, and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Systems to track the flow of the material. An MBA Program incorporates key components of business such as Strategy Planning, Risk Management, Team Management, Supply Chain Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Finance Management and Inventory Planning. Therefore I believe that an MBA program will be an Ideal platform for me to gain the necessary skill set and knowledge.

Even in global crises, Indian economy is growing at fast pace with 7.2% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). And One of the reasons for India's growth post Independence has been Public Sector Enterprises in Health, Defense, Telecom, Oil and Gas etc. There are total 300 small and big organizations but out of that only 9 are considered as premium companies due to their production capacity and annual turnover. However, since last decade these some of these companies are running in deficit, due to fierce competition from private sector companies, price wars, bureaucratic hurdle, lack of global footprint and delay in decision making. My aim is to be a part of Indian PSE and become a Chairman and Managing Director, because CMD holds the reins of entire enterprise, he is final decision taking authority and is responsible for entire organizations performance. I will plan the stages of operations and would first analyze the logical verticals of the operations and form separate committees to govern each vertical operations, each committee will be assigned certain targets and prime target of the company will be to gain the confidence of main street consumer, this will lead to gain in stock prices. After ensuring the growth in local market I would devise a plan for global expansions and will utilize my professional and personal global network developed over the time. Certainly this would set an example for other PSE and will help India to increase its GDP in more progressive manner.

I believe that, my deep knowledge about the telecom sector operations will be an important part to be shared in the classroom. The challenges faced by me and my team when the project had incurred losses and the steps taken by the team to mitigate to the loss will be an important issues to be shared in the class. Our Project was the first managed services project in telecom industry, hence my experience of developing the process will be a help for my peers to understand the role of each vertical and key positions in each vertical. This experience will help everybody to devise a good business model for any service industry operations. I believe that I will be able to contribute to the class by sharing my personal leadership experience of being a Students Union Leader; I had lead student unions of five colleges for two years with a mass of approx seven thousand students. As a leader it was good experience as I was able to address most of the critical issues for the students such as Amendment in Student insurance and Student fees.

After completing my Masters Program in USA, my approach had changed toward the subject had changed. I developed good analyzing skills during my research and project work. The professional and personal network developed during the Masters Program has helped me to be updated with the developments in various industries. Hence I feel that my academic and professional experience will be an advantage to the class.