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Running header: GRADUATE MANAGEMENT EXTERNSHIP 1
Curricular Practical Training (CPT)
Anirudh Talakanti
ATALAK7027
Sullivan University
Week - 10
MGT 597: Graduate Management Externship
GRADUATE MANAGEMENT EXTERNSHIP 2
Introduction:
I am Anirudh Kumar Reddy Talakanti, student at Sullivan University with the MSMIT
program. I have done my masters in Computer engineering and bachelors in Mechanical
engineering from Jawaharlal Technological University in India. I am pursuing my Graduate
Program (Masters) to focus more into Analytics, Database Management and Distributed
Networking. I have a natural interest into the Analytics part of the world and always wanted to
work in that area. With that in mind, I got some training in SAP Business Intelligence and Oracle
Business Intelligence tools. I got my first opportunity to work with SAP Business Intelligence
(Business Objects tools). Though shaky in the initial few months, I worked hard and I was able
to stabilize in that technology. I got to communicate with different cross functional teams which
helped me not only with the technology, but other aspects of typical work environment. Due to
the nature of the technology I’m working now and want to pursue further, I needed some more
in-depth knowledge in exploring, analyzing databases and some management skills as down the
line my target is to lead a team and manage projects on my own with the Analytics technology
(McKenna, 2010). From where I’ve been working for the past 2 years, I explored several options
and zeroed in on Sullivan University to pursue this goal and gain knowledge in the areas I
wanted to which would in turn help my career in the long term. Technology wise, I got a very
good start and I’m improving my skills in that area as time goes on and at the same time learn
something new at regular intervals. To be able to sustain in the technology field, I intend to
constantly be updated on the latest changes in the technology and at the same time establish and
excel leadership and management skills which would help me move up the ladder in the
organization. My target is to master Technology + Management.
GRADUATE MANAGEMENT EXTERNSHIP 3
Professional Experience - Overview:
My Under Grad helped me with the start I needed in the training when I started to venture into
the area of Business Intelligence. This required my skills in computer science and also Business
Analysis skills.
I’ve been working in IT for more than 3 years now and my focus of work has been in Business
Analytics / Business Intelligence area. I’ve used different reporting tools from SAP Business
Objects Enterprise Suite like Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence and Explorer for delivering
detailed, ad-hoc and exploratory views based on the Business users requirements (McKenna,
2010). As an integral function to this job and technology, I communicate with technology
functional users, business end users and senior management in trying to understand the
requirements and necessity of these reports and how they help them drive the business and
decision making about Key Performance Indicators. Based on their needs and the objectives, I
choose the right tool and deliver the respective reports accordingly (Dyne, 2009). Once the end
product is ready, I conduct end to end validations to make sure the data reports are presenting is
accurate as these can be the driving factors in key decision making in a lot of scenarios.
I also help them train with the tools in terms of usage of the reports so that they can fully utilize
the tool features to explore thru the reports for better understanding and analysis (Dyne, 2009).
Apart from working with the business end users, I work with the Application Support and
Database support teams in regular intervals to troubleshoot issues in case of any problems
reported by the business end users once they start using the reports.
GRADUATE MANAGEMENT EXTERNSHIP 4
Professional Experience - Detail:
To explain what I learned in my professional experience in detail, I’m laying out information on
a few projects I’ve been working for the last 2 years at Lexmark International. I work for the
World Wide Analytics team and part of the Analytics Design/Development team. I have 5 more
colleagues in my team and we all report to our Manager. Actual Work deliverables are assigned
by our manager to our team depending on our skill area and the requirement (Bruce, 2010). Most
of the time I worked on 3 Reporting tools, Business Objects Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence
and Explorer.
Project 1 MPS Phase 1
MPS is Managed Print Services which is a new wave of services by Lexmark where in they
manage the print services for a customer from Day 1 till whenever they needed. The services
would include Initial setup, Installation, Maintenance, troubleshooting, upgrades etc. The project
spanned across Sales and Accounting functional areas and the business end users of the
respective areas had some specific reporting requirements for their business analysis once the
project goes live. If we delve into one of the requirements in Sales functional area, To be able to
view Open Orders based on some Delivery and Billing conditions being met. Based on this my
first step towards building the design for the report was to meet the Functional specialist in the
Sales area to understand where the data lies and how the configuration was between Sales,
Delivery and Billing areas. Once I understood the common link between these areas, I started the
initial design in the Business Objects IDT to build a Universe including the concerned database
tables and established the connection between them by implementing the database joins
accordingly. I’ve added the conditions mentioned by the business users as filters in the design so
GRADUATE MANAGEMENT EXTERNSHIP 5
that the data is restricted as desired by the users. This got validated and desired fields have been
added as objects in the Universe and then the Universe as an object (Sales_Open_Orders.unx)
got published in the repository. Then came the part of building the actual report using Web
Intelligence tool where I started building a blank report with the data source being the universe
built in the above steps (Sales_Open_Orders.unx). To the report output, I’ve added whatever
fields user wanted to see. Once all the required fields are in the report query, I’ve made some
customizations which included a bar chart for top 10 Customers based on the total revenue of the
open sales orders for the respective customers. I’ve also included some alerts, rankings, drill up
and down options etc. Got the data in the report validated and promoted to Production. Trained
the users as to using the report for their analysis
Project 2 CDM
CDM (Channel Data Management) project was for the Marketing team to analyze the Lexmark
data coming from Channel sales personnel and Reporters. One of the key reports delivered to this
team was Finance Trend report by Geography, Segmentation area, Markets and Product Line.
The design and development was done similar to the MPS project mentioned above. The key
objective for this report was to be able to see the trend of revenue, sales units etc by current year
vs. prior year (2013 vs. 2012), current year’s month vs. prior year’s month (Jan 2014 vs. Jan
2013) and current year’s quarter vs prior year’s quarter. Different tabs presented with data and
charts of these trends based on Geographies (North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia
Pacific), Product Lines (Printers, Options, Supplies, Warranty), Segmentation areas (Channel,
Enterprise) and Markets (some key markets like Germany, Italy, China, Mexico etc).
GRADUATE MANAGEMENT EXTERNSHIP 6
Lessons Learned and Areas of Improvement:
There are quite a few lessons that I learned thru out my experience so far. One definite area is the
constant technology changes that went on as time progressed. I had to constantly update myself
with the new versions of the technology, new features and functionality that come with it, key
upgrades and challenges etc. Also, there were some areas where I lacked necessary exposure to
go to that extra mile which included efficient database analysis, functional concepts in Finance,
Issues due to performance and networking. One other area where I wanted to improve was my
leadership skills. I’m really interested to be able to lead a team and manage project
implementations on my own. The additional responsibility is something that challenges me in
addition to the technology aspect.
Current courses and Academic Objective:
In my first semester at Sullivan, I took up Managerial Communication skills in order to learn and
improve on the communication and other aspects in management. It helped me with the same
and also some useful and effective ways to communicate with different teams and senior
management. In the current semester, I’ve taken up Data Mining and Managerial Finance for
further help on the areas I’m lacking and to get a firm grip on. Thru out my experience in the
Business Intelligence area, I’ve had the need to analyze the data layer part of the applications.
Due to some complex reporting requirements I’ll need to go thru the database architecture to
analyze and detect certain information which would help understanding and solving some
problems.
The process of analyzing this data from different perspectives will be an essential help to my job.
One other area I’ve always had interest is networking and the way different components in a
network communicate and affect the performance of anything we end up developing. There were
numerous occasions where I’ve had to analyze some performance issues and one primary reason
can be the network and the applications residing in different areas of this network. Since the
GRADUATE MANAGEMENT EXTERNSHIP 7
companies I’ve worked in deals with multiple of these distributed systems, the course of
Distributed computing should help me understand the concepts around these.
Managerial Finance is one other course I took up this semester is to get to understand the
Managerial approach towards Finance and accounting. Not only to understand the approach
towards finance and accounting, but also towards the perspective of the management to
understand. This would indeed help me in the long term in both management aspect as well as
finance and accounting.
GRADUATE MANAGEMENT EXTERNSHIP 8
References:
Dyne, L.V., Ang, S. & Livermore, D. (2009). Cultural intelligence: A pathway for leading in a rapidly
globalizing world, Pfeiffer Publishers, San Francisco, USA.
McKenna, T. (2010). Communicate to Improve Job Performance, 102(6), 15-15. Retrieved from
Business Source Complete Database.
Bruce, P. C., Patel, N. R., & Shmueli, G. (2010). Data mining for business intelligence: Concepts,
techniques, and applications in Microsoft office excel with xlminer. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &
Sons.