Gunjan
Business Operations, Manager
ZS Career Path
Manager (2012-Present)
Business Consultant (2009-2012)
General Analytics Associate Consultant (2007-2009)
General Analytics Associate (2005-2007)
Why ZS?
ZS was unknown to me when I started interviewing. I had offers from two IIMs and another firm in Bangalore. The choice was difficult, but ZS's interview process itself helped me make the decision. I met interesting ZSers, heard about some of the client problems they solve using data and analytical findings, and a grand vision for ZS in India. In retrospect, I made a great decision and got more than what I hoped for. I am part of many office-wide initiatives, have experienced a range of projects, had client interaction early in my career and, most importantly, implemented some of my ideas as internal initiatives.
My Favorite Project
My most recent engagement with a relatively new biopharmaceutical firm launching a new drug is turning out to be quite exciting. We are helping our client understand how one of their biggest potential customers, a large dialysis chain in US, operates. The project involves a new therapy area (read - lots of research papers to examine), challenging hypotheses to analyze (read - different statistical approaches to explore) and helping our client build their brand (read - growing the business) is exceptional on this project. A recent reference to one of our analyses in the poster presented by our client in a national clinical meeting was indeed a fitting reward for work that we did so far.
My After-Hours Engagement/Activities
A recent activity that I have picked up is watching the sunset from my new flat's terrace with my wife. It’s a great stressbuster. In recent past, I have been involved with different NGOs where I taught school kids on weekends and organized a two-week summer camp focused on creative learning in 2010. I am also an avid fan of board games. My favorites being - "Ticket to Ride," "Carcassonne," "Settlers of Catana" and "Acquire." Someday I aspire to design my own board game.
My ZS Values Story
My extended stay of around 6 months in New York was a unique experience which strengthened my belief in ZS values. Support that I got from the whole office was amazing and they did everything possible to make the experience a valuable part of my professional growth. I was entrusted with responsibility to manage three different client contacts and oversee work of my team in Pune. Everyone including my project principal and manager helped me get acquainted with US culture, client requirements and I was able to become productive in just a few days. Whenever I faced challenges, no matter whom I approached and when I approached, they always had time and ideas to help me. This extraordinary sense of camaraderie and open door policy makes ZS a unique place to work and grow. You can reach out to anyone for help without any second thoughts.
My Advice for Potential ZSers
ZS culture is a unique blend of a collegial and competitive environment. It gives you opportunity to work with some of the best people in the industry and learn from them. Now, since your peers are best, the expectation is also high. So be ready to go beyond those expectations. Fulfilling the expectations is a norm at ZS.
A Week in the Life
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6:30 am IST
Good morning! - I push myself to get out of bed to stick to my exercise routine despite a late night movie on Sunday. It feels good after doing the "Sudarshan Kriya."
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8:30 am IST
Project planning - I plan for the week and speak to my project team about their respective plans. I decide to touch base with them after lunch to review the progress on the titration analysis.
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3:00 pm IST
Analysis Review - I meet with my team to review the titration analysis. We find a significant relationship between frequency of titration and dose utilization. I am sure the client would be interested to understand this in further detail. We plan to run a few more scenarios to understand this relationship further
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6:20 pm IST
Time to relax - Back at home, I enjoy a nice evening with my wife, watching the sunset from the terrace. We plan for a visit to Matheran on the following weekend.
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9:30 pm IST
Wrap up the day! - I have a conference call with my team in the US to provide them with updates about our progress. We review our analysis results and decide on next steps.
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11:00 am IST
Client presentation refinement - I review the presentation and do some final changes to it for our upcoming diagnostics discussion on the call plan for the primary care sales force of my other client. I send it across to my team after review.
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12:00 pm IST
PD Lunch - Head out for a lunch at Indi Joes with my professional development reportee Rahul. We have an informal chat about how his work on the new data warehousing project is going on. I share some tips with him to improve his communication with his team in New York. We have a sumptuous lunch followed by a nice dessert.
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2:00 pm IST
Interview - Lunch had its effect on me, I head to the cafeteria to get a quick cup of tea before I meet a prospective candidate for a case round. She seems to be quite excited about ZS. I give her a brief introduction of the case and let her solve it on her own for the next half an hour. We discuss the results and her recommendation in detail. She is good at technical details but is struggling with analytical understanding. I provide my feedback to HR team after the interview.
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6:30 pm IST
Client conference - We have a conference call with the client to kick off the call plan design process for their Virology sales force. We finalize business rules for this design and discuss pros and cons of some of the field review rules. The client also updates us about an upcoming project for integrating one of their products in the portfolio of a new sales force.
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8:30 am IST
Start of the day - Wednesdays are very hectic. The entire day looks packed with meetings
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10:00 am IST
Book club meeting - We have a book club meeting every month. Today I present one of my favorite books "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch to the audience. I start with a small icebreaker and ask the audience to list their childhood dreams on a piece of paper to get them engaged. I walk them through Randy's childhood dreams and tell them what he did to achieve them. We have an interesting discussion on some of the ideas. After an hour we close out by nominating another person who will present next month.
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2:00 pm IST
Analysis design - Ravi stops by my office to update me about some interesting finding on another analysis of Hemoglobin level variability in dialysis patients. We read through a paper to understand the different ways of measuring the variability and design our analysis according to it. It takes a fair bit of time, but it is definitely time well spent.
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6:30 pm IST
Weekly video conference meeting - We have a video conference meeting with our team in Evanston. We go through progress on all the different project streams and discuss the upcoming project tasks. We have a knowledge sharing session on our optimization tool - Javelin Call Plan Designer. We have an interesting Q&A session involving certain cases which we optimized in the tool and their results.
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9:30 pm IST
Conference call - Another conference call with my teammate in the San Francisco office. We talk at length about the Hemoglobin variability analysis and decide on next steps. We also spoke about a new proposal that we need to write for deploying the ZS OnTrak system to help our client manage the analysis requests.
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10:00 am IST
New Employee Orientation - Today I am meeting a few new ZSers. I am going to take their introductory call planning session along with Jitesh. This is their 2nd week at NEO (New Employee Orientation) and they seem to have a good deal of knowledge and lots of questions to fire. We talk about why our clients need call plans, what challenges they face, how we solve their issues and how we see this practice area evolve in future. They ask a lot of intricate questions, which assures us that this class of NEO is no less than other ZSers.
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3:30 pm IST
Office event - It's fun time!! We are now having "The cross tribe twin day" event in the office. People were asked to find a similar looking person in the office and present themselves as a twin. Most of them came up with some hilarious ideas. We see a fantastic performance from each of the participants and laugh our guts out.
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4:00 pm IST
Finalize client deliverable - We are pretty close to finalizing this semester's call plans for our client's primary care sales force. All the team members in my team sit together for a joint review of our presentation and final files which we plan to send out by the end of this week. We have a rigorous QC session and find that all is well.
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5:30 pm IST
Wrap up - I leave for home early as my extended family is visiting me today.
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7:30 am IST
Early to office - I come in early as I plan to wrap up my work and leave early
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9:00 am IST
Proposal for OnTrak - I started putting together the proposal for the deployment of OnTrak. It required me to understand and document exact client requirements and map it with our tools capability. After several hours of work I was able to put together a decent first draft of the proposal
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2:30 pm IST
Recruitment Initiative - I meet Bimal, Principal at ZS Pune office, to brainstorm on next steps to revamp our hiring process. I bounce off some ideas with him and he charts out a plan to move forward. I take notes and send him the plan after the meeting for his review.
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4:30 pm IST
Ensuring quality - Reviewed the Data Quality Assurance Module results for another set of deliverables for a specialty sales force. We found a few minor issues that we will fix next week. We also discussed how we can improve our process further for next cycle.