Women have always been the inspirational starlight of humanity’s cosmos since the dawn of civilization. In the corporate arena, there are numerous inspirational traits women possess impacting global industrial growth. According to Sushma Bhat, the Sr. Vice President of PROVAB TECHNOSOFT, women have open minds, flexibility, faith, commitment, creativity, learning skills, and patience. They know how to set the right priorities. The ability of women to work patiently towards achieving the goal is the most significant factor when it comes to dealing with challenging situations.

She adds, “The business scenario for our customers’ changes in the market, so is the technology.” Women should always compete with the situations, not their rivals. They should act as per the market demand. They should strive for continuous learning and be creative with their knowledge. “The same practice has been the key reason for my success,” she states.

Legendary Brilliance

Sushma, in her career path, has always been a staunch woman leader surmounting challenges to scale her success higher and higher. She started her career as a business development executive and account manager for IT consulting services. She was involved in the end-to-end process contributing to the growth and success of this business vertical.  At the same time, she had to ensure the productivity and efficiency of team operations and provide direction on how best to handle different tasks while maintaining customer satisfaction. she had built strong networking relationships with most of the C-suite executives.

She had also worked in the travel technology domain as a senior consultant and advisor to travel agents, tour operators, and travel management companies. She had to work closely with the CEOs and Founders to design and architect their online reservation system, which includes customer journey, user experience, agent business model, and mid/back office.

The travel sector was hit most during the COVID-19 recession. During this period, she worked closely with the customers to develop a custom online booking engine according to market needs and customer demographics.

She also worked with airlines and private charters to develop their PSS passenger service system. “Here also I worked closely with the VP engineers working out the challenges in Flight Price Management and Yield Management,” she reflects.

In the year 2021, she again started working in the IT consulting domain where she worked with CTOs and the VP of engineering to fulfill the technology gap that they were facing while building their products.

As of today, Sushma managed approximately 50 clients personally because of the confidence they have in her and the support they got with Provab’s resources with a wide range of tech stacks.

A swift approach towards understanding the situations, and customer demographics, meeting clients’ expectations, and helping them to develop best-in-class solutions was the key to Sushma’s growth and success.

Currently, as the Sr. Vice President Sushma works majorly in two verticals: IT consulting and Travel technology.

PROVAB TECHNOSOFT

…is recognized as the #1 company in travel technology. It is an award-winning company in the travel business providing an online booking engine to increase online sales for flight, hotel, car, taxi, activities, and vacation package booking. “We are partnered with major GDS providers like Travelport, Amadeus, Sabre, Hotelbeds, and 14 more consolidators,” she says, adding, “We worked with Airlines and private charters to build their PSS, passenger service system/ airline reservation system.”

Provab has its product in OTAs, fleet transportation, quick commerce, healthcare, and insurance sectors too.

Provab has also taken a gigantic step in experiencing the IT Consulting business vertical, where it provides technology consulting as support to product-based companies such as fintech, travel, transport, Ed-tech, eCommerce, healthcare, and food technology. As most of these companies are coming up with their digital products, Provab supports them with technology resources that can seamlessly work with the product team and engineering managers.

As per Sushma, a modern digital approach synchronizing with the unique market needs has always been a challenge to startups or product companies. Both product and service companies have become competitive. The second challenge was, companies were having a tough time finding, hiring, and keeping the top technical talent which restricts them to keep their business running and growing. Following are the steps that she has taken to overcome these challenges.

• She believed in delivering the technology as a source for clients’ success.
• She helped travel startups to design and develop their MVP model with Provab’s expertise in the travel industry.
• She helped large online travel agencies convert their offline business model into online digital platforms.
• Helped companies to manage the cost of digitization of their service by deploying the right combination of resources.
• She furthers, “On an organizational level, I made sure that the company recognizes the potential of all the employees involved in the company’s growth which has always been a proven way to increase team’s retention, motivation, productivity, and happiness.”

A Diverse Journey of Equality

Sushma has implemented many strategies to promote gender diversity for various leadership positions at Provab. She conveys, “I always believed ‘Diversity’ as an inclusion in our journey, not as a destination. I always made sure that no one should be discriminated against because of their differences not only in gender but also in age, ability, expression, or religion.”

Their current women-to-men ratio is 35% to 45% (approx.). About 80% of the women have resumed work after maternity leave. “I focus on Diversity hiring which is always a differentiated approach to solving problems,” she says. She continuously incorporates values to enhance the work culture at her firm. She strives and encourages women to focus on an overall learning circle which will help them to handle more challenging roles. She explains that they focus on individual performance. Working hard in the right direction will always bring success to individual growth. “I believe that the success of each individual contributes to overall organizational success.”

Apart from this, they have team-building activities every quarter. She finds this an invaluable tool to create more effective teams. “This definitely creates a feeling of cohesiveness, especially among women, and thus helps women recognize each other’s talents and contributions to the team,” she believes.

Trumping Transitions

Preparing herself for the ongoing transition in the industry, Sushma says that she sees a massive approach by the companies for digital transformation to improve the physical aspects of one’s business across banking, finance, education, engineering, manufacturing, and other service sectors. Companies of all sizes are seeing remarkable business outcomes from digital transformation efforts, such as improved efficiency, growth in revenue, increased customer satisfaction, reduced operation cost, etc.

Every step in the digital transformation approach needs the right skills in terms of application development, product testing, data analysis, feature enhancement, maintenance, and promotion.

She continuously focuses on learning and implementing new processes along with continuous assessments from the clients to help them stay ahead of the competition.

“We always try to have the right set of a team ready to take on challenges occurring during the implementation. I ensure a proactive approach to collecting customer feedback so that I never stay behind from the current business needs, even as those needs evolve,” says Sushma.

Maximizing Milestones

In her advice to women leaders willing to venture into the modern business arena, Sushma shares that a woman always inspires other women. One must have the courage to take the first step and believe in themselves. The world is full of ideas today, especially for Indians, whose aspirations are unique and unparalleled. They are demanding.

Those who are planning for a startup idea and who have their MVP done, please do not wait for perfection. Start your service. Because, if ‘You’ don’t do it now, somebody else is going to do it. You will keep improving with continuous learning and continuous progress.

The country needs more women entrepreneurs. It not only contributes to our economy but also changes the perspective of our society. The upcoming generation will see their wives, mothers, and daughters differently. They will give their daughters a chance to succeed.

On her future goals for herself and PROVAB TECHNOSOFT, Sushma reveals, “I envision myself as a successful entrepreneur inspiring millions of women entrepreneurs.”

Professionally, she wants to envision herself as a leader in Digital Transformation looking forward to working effectively in a complex decision-making environment and successfully selling multi-faceted, high-value solutions. Diligent at researching, planning, and structuring new business development activities.

“My goals will revolve around translating Digital Vision and Strategy into Roadmap, Planning, Execution, and successful deployment and hence expertise in leading Global Digital Transformation for all our clientele who are entrusting and investing themselves in us,” she concludes.

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