Often bound to the time frame of personal obligations and social prejudices, women professionals have to face abundant obstacles before ascending any executive position in their career. Even if someone manages to break the glass ceiling, her leadership qualities are judged on the mere basis of her personal identity. Sometimes, society fails to accept the fact that the sturdy determination to provide guidance, as well as the zeal to lead the way, is what makes a leader and it has nothing to with gender identity. Presently, many women are trying to break free the barriers and they are emerging as a beacon of hope for others who are afraid to lead life and achieve success on their own terms. One such phenomenon is Ramya Parashar (Chief Operating Officer, MiQ Digital), who despite her young age not only managed to ascend to the position of COO of MiQ Digital but is also navigating her firm to greater heights by the virtue of her impeccable industryrelevant skills. As a part of MiQ’s global operational board, Ramya represents the voice of India.

When asked about her ideology on leadership, Ramya quotes, “Every decision we make, from our choices to how we respond to the circumstances of our life shapes our destiny. As a leader, we must remain flexible and resilient under pressure, adjust to changing scenarios, and guide our teams to new courses of action”. She believes that the ability to bring out the best performance in every individual is paramount. “When leaders commit to the success of their teams, they will deliver for your clients. No matter how well we account for known risks in our business strategy or product launch, there will always be variables that can throw a wrench in our plans. Remaining purpose-driven at all times and striving to continuously learn and improve ourselves as well as our teams make us stand apart as leaders”, avers Ramya.

Ramya engages in an exclusive interaction with Women Entrepreneur.

Give Us A Brief Overview Of Miq Digital And Its Current Position In The Industry.

A programmatic media partner for marketers and agencies, MiQ Digital is a leader in data science, analytics, and programmatic trading. We connect data from multiple sources to unlock interesting insights and ensure our clients are always making the right media investments. Brands not only need to connect all their first-party data but also enhance it with the right second and third-party data. After analyzing it with data science technology and resources, they must use the acquired insights to build creative content with the right messages and target them to the right audiences with programmatic trading expertise.

That’s where MiQ comes in. We connect the right people, industry partnerships, and technology in a complete programmatic stack to solve our clients’ business challenges. By maximizing the value of their data, we try to deliver the best programmatic campaigns and high-value insights.

What Motivated You To Venture Into The Domain Of Marketing Agency? How Are You Implementing Your Expertise Across The Functionalities Of Miq?

Marketing has always intrigued me to understand consumer behaviour that drives enhanced business performance and growth. Leading the Programmatic space through cutting-edge innovations and bringing programmatic as well as data together for business problem solving is what motivated me to explore this industry. With an in-depth understanding of Technology and Talent in the dynamic technology space, I have been able to leverage my experience in digitizing the experience for our employees and bringing in data driven decision making in our approach and initiatives.

We have continued to scale our peoplecentric practices, enhance company culture and drive employee engagement through cutting edge Innovation and Digital Transformation. Amongst other things, I specialize in driving Sustainable practices,Operational excellence, Infrastructure as a Service, Analytics Excellence, People Growth & Management, all of these driving bottom-line efficiency.

Building my own identity by continuing to invest in myself and developing an indepth understanding of Programmatic advancements, interoperability of platforms, and HR transformation in the dynamic landscape makes me look forward the new challenges and possibilities.

What Are Some Of The Most Challenging Aspects Of Your Role As The Coo? How Do You Overcome Them?

My role is to enable teams to think about the bigger picture and multiple angles on how to deploy MiQ solutions that drive competitive advantage. I look to operationalize the strategy and approach to business from a creative point of view by driving operational excellence at all layers, be it spanning from design to implementing operational rhythm and managing the bottom line, or establishing policies that promote company culture and vision.

A few of the challenging aspects of my role include overcoming the gaps in hybrid work strategies relating to the future of work, enhancing operational efficiencies, driving top-quartile business problem-solving capabilities, and fuelling greater market/customer connect for our Center of Excellence in India. We have witnessed a deluge of unprecedented and unexpected challenges externally: many companies being compelled to shut down offices to respond to the sudden shift to remote working, and from streamlining operations to adapting to fluctuating customer expectations.

Within MiQ it was about securing our employees jobs, prioritising unified global GP, embracing fluidity of talent pool and many more. One theme that has been common across all of our operational strategy has been AGILITY and RESILIENCE. Widespread adoption of automation across the enterprise, enabling self-service has helped us maintain high levels of operational efficiency and enabled the business to work like a well-oiled machine– while still being profitable.

How Does Your Prior Experience Help You In Your Current Role As The Chief Operating Officer At Miq Digital?

My professional journey has been about Grit, Courage, and Determination. As I grew into the role of a leader, gaining exposure to a breadth of portfolios was important. This means, not just growing within the expertise of my domain but also picking new skills. Working with SMEs in a new domain required a lot of self-confidence and grit to not lose faith. There was a time when I was asked if I can support building a Business Applications team and scale it for India.

Coming from pure Infrastructure and Technology support meant that we had to provide stable Technology services that supported not only the hosting of apps but their availability, Business Continuity, Security, and many more. Since I didn’t have the experience, I felt like I was not cut out for the Business Apps role. However, no technology is different if you get its basic functionality and understand its purpose.

"Every decision we make, from our choices to how we respond to the circumstances of our life shapes our destiny"

Shifting from Director– Tech Infrastructure support to Director– Business Applications meant that I picked the essential skills in areas like SFDC, HRIS, Web, and ERP domains to accelerate the performance of developers and applications team. In parallel to driving business performance, I was managing little kids who were two years old back then. Today when I look back, this definitely was one of the key decisions that helped me learn the complete eco-system of technology and step up to any new challenges.

COO is the architect, instigator and change champion for the company strategy. One will need to oversee dayto-day operations, implement continuous improvement as well as execute the company’s long-term goals. Because this role is so diverse and oversees many different departments, having the working knowledge of and experience with many different business functions comes in handy. It's much easier to have walked the talk when you understand every role on your team and have either lived it or taken the time to understand it. This has given me the ability to identify gaps and understand needs. You have to be a jack-of-all-trades and master of a few!

What Have Been The Most Significant Milestones That You Have Achieved So Far In Your Professional Journey?

Though there are many instances that I cherish as milestones, one of my noteworthy accomplishments include delivering around $3M of Cost Savings by Implementation of various ‘Real-time business analytics’ dashboard focussed on Process and Technological Transformation in the Collaboration Space, Network, and Infra optimization. Apart from that, I managed to reduce the cost per hire during the competitive market/external landscape. I also played an effective role in enhancing employee engagement as well as manager effectiveness during external global changes and ensured digitization of our Talent processes for building a more people-centric and sustainable operations.

Enablement of a data-driven and sales intelligence mindset with our teams is another achievement of mine because understanding our customers better and responding, rather than reacting, to the quickly shifting market demands was paramount. Along with that, I succeeded in driving bottom-line efficiency and enhanced operational rhythm through the right set of enterprise objectives and KPIs.

What Is Your Guiding Leadership Philosophy?

My guiding leadership philosophy has been to love my business problems and drive transformational change to adapt to an ever-changing business environment. Having a seismic impact in the Talent marketplace is key. As leaders we need to balance Digitization, Innovation, and Performance to stay on the right trajectory but also continuously evolve and futureproof our business.

Ramya Parashar, Chief Operating Officer, MIQ Digital

A Graduate In Electronics, Ramya Is A Certified Digital Business Strategist And Organizational Performance Expert From Iim Bangalore. She Has Steered The Technology, Operations, And Business Applications Divisions At Many Global Organizations Such As Jcpenney And Fireeye. Apart From That, She Has Also Held Various Leadership Roles In The Technology Industries, Leading Talent & Operations Functions In Companies Like Unisys & Monsanto.

Awards & Recognitions:

• Adgully Leader 2.0 under 40 Awardee for Excellence in Technology and Innovation

• SILVER AWARD from Lawrence Weinbach, CEO of UNISYS for improving the over performance and P&L positioning of Global Support team

• Six Sigma, Three Sigma awards for delivering flawless service

• INNOVATION AWARD by the EVP of FireEye for implementing Order processing & Quote creation automation thus driving efficiencies in Sales processes.