Nandakumar Moni: Zero Distance to the Customer: Scaling Partnerships at GlobalLogic

Chip Rodgers  0:01  
Hey everyone, Chip Rodgers, we're here day well, I guess it's day one. Officially, it's Tuesday here in Seattle at catalyst. Catalyst 25 kicked off with a great keynote this morning and and incredible, you know, energy and really great event here this this morning.

Nandakumar Moni  0:19  
Yeah, absolutely. Chip, thanks for having me here. I know it's my first time as catalyst. It's a fantastic event. I love the vibe. I love the kind of representation that we have from different companies out here. There are technology vendors, there are si there are like, ISVs, and there is a lot of innovation that's happening that's been on the on the floor today, right? I think that's what's really exciting about how can I really apply this to my customers and my business?

Chip Rodgers  0:45  
Yeah, yeah, good reason to be here, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Nandakumar Moni  0:48  
I think it's been a fantastic morning so far. And the keynote was great, of course.

Chip Rodgers  0:52  
Yeah, yeah, great keynote. So I'm so excited to be joined by Nanda Kumar. Moni Nanda is Senior VP of ecosystems and alliances at global logic, and not to be confused with globant, where you were previously, for about, I think five years previously, long background in technology with Microsoft, I think 10 years and IBM and a number of other technology companies. So really excited to have you join us today. Ananda, yeah,

Nandakumar Moni  1:26  
thank you, Chip so, yeah. Let me briefly introduce myself. You know, like you mentioned, I have many years of experience in the technology industry, and having worked with all those companies that you just mentioned, it's been a wonderful experience, because I've had exposure not just to technology, but also to different markets, you know, emerging markets, global markets, and the kind of roles that I said in that period of time, right? I've been like in front line sales, worked in Channel Sales. I've worked in, you know, channel management, and now, eventually, you know, working across infrastructure services, Product Engineering, services, digital transformation. I mean, it's, it's been competing like a full circle, I would say. But there is still, every time I look back and I see what's happening, there's so much to learn, right? You just feel like you're just a tiny speck of speck of dust, you know, on the wall, and like with the way technology is changing, right? It's, it's literally you got to be on your toes to keep up with with it, not just for the sake of tech, but also because you want to be relevant to your customers and your partners, right? And that's when you can continue to grow and continue to create more value for for everybody you work with. Well.

Chip Rodgers  2:34  
And, no kidding, I mean as Yeah, and it's, it's only getting faster and faster and faster with with with AI, the introduction of AI over the last, you know, two or three years, or Gen AI, it's, it's hard to keep up. No, absolutely,

Nandakumar Moni  2:47  
it's very difficult to keep up. But I think the the most important message out here is that, how relevant will you be within the noise? Right? Because there's a lot of AI driven innovation happening in the market today. As we can see, there's AI, then there is Gen AI, and now you also have like, agentic AI right now. Now, when you look at all these coming together, I think what's important is to understand the context in which you're actually creating these models, these services, and how your clients are ultimately going to be taking advantage of them. Right either is to improve productivity, bring in more operational and cost efficiencies, drive more secure software development environments, right? And especially when I talk about my company, global logic, we are at the cutting edge of innovation. You know, we are, we are a product engineering services company, so we build software products for our clients, and we we've also seen the transformation happening within our clients. So we've actually invested in, you know, creating some of our own solutions, and, you know, IP that we can use to actually, you know, deliver more value for our clients, be it generative AI solutions or, you know, be it also like accelerated software development using something like velocity AI, which we just launched about a month ago.

Chip Rodgers  3:58  
Well, that's exciting. That's exciting. So the let's talk a little bit about partnerships and your the role of you and your team, you know, as a global Si, you know you're primarily when you talked about building your own IP as well, but your primary business is around services and and sort of putting the pieces together and change management and transformation and all the things that are that are required. Talk about the partnerships that that you and your team are working with, primarily, I assume you know the you know Technology Partnerships, you know IBM, Microsoft and some of the big technology players. What other kinds of partners would you include in their cloud players and all that? Absolutely,

Nandakumar Moni  4:48  
a great question. In fact, when we are working with partners, we are actually working on a couple of things. One of them is what we call a 360 degree approach to partnerships, which means we are not just. Uh, acting as an SI, who will, you know, take some solutions and services to market, but we also engineering some of these platforms for our clients, which makes us to deliver engineering led professional services, and that's where we see value coming up for our clients. Because, you know, we are closest to the product. On the engineering side, we understand the feedback that comes in from clients, through through support, and then also we are able to, sort of, like, make sure they are able to adapt it in the best possible, way possible, and that's driving, I'll say, more stickiness for their platform, you know, more value for us as a trusted partner, for these customers, right? So when you when I really look at the kind of partners that we work with, you know, like, of course, we work with cloud providers, but we also work with security vendors. We work with data platform companies and and we are also working with very niche organizations that are very vertical focused, or even micro, vertical focused. And some of them are like purely focusing on, for example, the the CFO organization, or some of them are just focusing only on automotive, right? So, so, so the So, the major and dynamics of Partnerships has completely changed compared to what it was a few years ago. There's no one size fits all, right? I mean, some of them offer baseline capabilities, but you have to really contextualize it in the environment that you're operating right? We cannot just say that, okay, I'm going to work in cloud and infrastructure. It means so many things to so many different verticals that we touch every day.

Chip Rodgers  6:16  
Well. And you bring up a really great point, I think, you know, sis are typically, you know, very close to customers. Really understand the industries you have very you know, specific industry specialists and and even down to the use case within those industries so challenging from a partner standpoint, how do you plug the right partners into the right organizations as you're going to market together? Yes.

Nandakumar Moni  6:43  
I mean, it is competitive, no doubt, right? I mean, especially when See, we would always want to do what is right for a customer, right? Make sure that so, so we work backwards from the customer, what we call zero distance to client, right? And that's our philosophy, not just from the from an organization perspective, or even from an alliance perspective. So when my team members actually work with the with the industry sellers in other groups, right? We just talk about, what is the real problem that we're trying to solve for the client. Then look at the technology that's really going to play a role the kind of services. And then we look at, okay, what vendor has those capabilities, whether we have it in house, whether we need to lean in on a partner. So so that way we are able to sort of, you know, bring in the right partners forward, and some of this is proactive and some of it is reactive. Because for me, you know, as a as a partnership leader, I want to make sure that, you know, while we set aspirational goals for our teams, we have a plan to achieve them. So, so it's a fine balance, I would say, you know, between trying to work with what a client needs and also telling them what, what are their latent needs going to look like, right? So sometimes that's where the partnership team comes in, saying, This might be better with a specific technology vendor versus the other one, and for this reason, right? And that's when me and my team are seen as trusted partners to our sales team and also to the customers, right? So, so it's a fine dance that we do every single day that, you know, we get into work.

Chip Rodgers  8:02  
Yeah, yeah, that's dance is, I think, a good, good, a good analogy. It's, it's a challenge, but, you know, you have to know not only global logic and the right organizations, but then also the partners, where, where to plug the right partners in, for the for current, for the either the customer or the use

Nandakumar Moni  8:23  
case, no, no, absolutely. I think it's always important to maintain the right balance, I would say. But sometimes, you know, it also always helps to lead, lead with something, because that's when you are seen as a trusted thought leader, you know, for your client and also for the other people that you work with. Right? Because alliance is all about building trust, you know, and building influence without authority in a lot of situations, both internally and externally.

Chip Rodgers  8:46  
Yeah, so true. Well, none of this has been fantastic conversation. Really appreciate it. I know you're you're off to catching a plane here shortly, heading down to Dallas to receive an award from Bomi, which is congratulations to global logic for that.

Nandakumar Moni  9:05  
You know, thanks. Thanks, Chip. Yeah. In fact, it just came out in the press today that, you know, our global logic, UK and Ireland team actually won a won the award for Partner of the Year, and we were really proud of this partnership, and I'm really proud of the work that my team has done, not just in winning business, but the way they have really pulled this partnership together, you know, working with clients, our sellers in the region, and also with with other Hitachi group companies. You know, this would not have been possible without them, and we've extremely bullish about the investments we continue to make in the ecosystem world, to men of to grow and do more value for our clients. That's

Chip Rodgers  9:39  
fantastic. Nanda, thank you so much for taking some time and have safe travels and and congrats at the Boomi event in Dallas.

Nandakumar Moni  9:49  
Yeah, absolutely thanks, Chip. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your conference. I mean, it's a fantastic two days. I mean, it's a pity I'm going to be missing some of it, but hope to catch up the live streams. You know, as I on my. I'm on the road, but, but, yeah, I think this is, this is really fantastic. Love the vibe, love the energy out here. So thanks for having me. And then, yeah, have a great Have a great day. Great

Chip Rodgers  10:09  
thanks tanta, and thank you all for joining and day two from Catalyst, and we'll see you next time. Thanks everybody. You.

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