Feb 2023 – Oct 2024 · 1 yr 8 mos · Dubai, United Arab Emirates · On-site

Aug 2020 – Feb 2023 · 2 yrs 6 mos

• Act as a trusted advisor to translate industry trends and use-cases into Data and Analytics capabilities with the goal of driving sales, adoption, and customer satisfaction. Covered multiple sectors in UAE (Banking, Public Sector, Telecoms, Travel and Transportation, Manufacturing), Bahrain, Qatar, and Pakistan.

Oct 2019 – Jul 2020 · 9 mos

• Senior Solution Sales Leader and advisor for Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services (Integration Platform as a Service - IPaaS). Primarily worked opportunities to accelerate customers’ migration to cloud platforms, cloud data warehouse, and cloud data lakes, such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, Snowflake, and Salesforce through better integration and governance across hybrid environments.
• Advising customers with diverse data an analytics landscapes, such as MS SQL Server, Oracle, Apache Hadoop, Teradata, Netezza, and Cloudera on how to transform to agile cloud platforms.
• Working directly as a technical subject matter expert to analyze needs, identify blockers, and customer’s business strategy, to recommend solutions related to integration, data, and AI. Influencing customer technology decisions so that the strategic direction was towards Informatica. Ownership of deal licensing and price negotiation.
• Engaged and led field sales (account managers), technical solution architects, channels and distribution, marketing, support, and inside sales to win new opportunities and improve customer satisfaction. Consistently closed deals with annual subscription (ACV) of $100K.
• Achievements:
• Added 3 new customer logos to the cloud business unit
• Grew genuine qualified pipeline from $800K to $4,000M in H1 2020.
• Grew thought leadership by leading joint customer-facing webinars with Microsoft Azure Synapse, AWS Redshift, Snowflake, and MicroStrategy.
• Keynote public speaker at Informatica Data Talk (Johannesburg) and multiple partner events.
• Grew partner network by conducting 6 enablement sessions with the aim of ramping up partners to generate autonomous business.

Jun 2018 – Oct 2019 · 1 yr 4 mos · Dubai, United Arab Emirates

• Account management, relationship development, demand creation, solution scoping, and customer relationships for key commercial sector accounts in UAE and Bahrain. Worked as the primary front-line seller for a territory of to grow usage/consumption of all cloud services on AWS. Ownership of deal licensing and price negotiation.
• Working directly as an advisor and technical subject matter expert to analyze needs, identify blockers, and customer’s business strategy, to recommend solutions that could be addressed by cloud solutions. Customer challenges addressed were broad in scope, e.g. how to migrate SAP to AWS, how to enable full DevOps with CI/CD, how to migrate MySQL to AWS Aurora. Coordinated efforts and engagement of AWS solution engineering architects, support engineers, and specialists to identify and close opportunities and improve customer satisfaction.
• Influencing customer decisions on technology choices by becoming a trusted advisor on the strategic direction towards AWS. Focused on large enterprise migrations with banks, e-commerce, and manufacturing (SAP, Oracle EBS).
• 2019 – Grew cloud usage/consumption in territory 42% in 6 months
• 2019 –101% quota achievement of for H1
• 2019 – Signed up launch partners and coordinated sales initiatives for the data center go-live in the Middle East
• 2019 – Initiated Public Policy team engagement with regulators to ease cloud adoption in the banking sector of Bahrain

Sep 2014 – Apr 2018 · 3 yrs 7 mos

• Specialized Sales for Telco Analytics delivering solutions on customer experience, AI, data monetization, network optimization. Influencingand acting as a trusted advisor on customer decisions on technology choices so that the strategic direction was towards IBM.
• Ownership of deal licensing and price negotiation. Coordinated efforts and engagement of IBM solution engineering architects, Technical Account Managers, support engineers, and specialists to identify and close opportunities and improve customer satisfaction.
• Achievements:
• 2017: YoY growth = 4%, Achieved 144% against quota
• 2016: YoY growth = 317%, Achieved 156% against quota
• 2015: YoY growth = 50%, Achieved 60% against quota
• Tech Focus
• Big Data & Analytics - Hadoop, Stream Computing, Data Warehouse (Netezza)
• Information Integration - Data Integration, ETL, Data Quality
• Business Intelligence - Cognos
• Predictive Analytics & Data Mining – SPSS

May 2009 – Sep 2014 · 5 yrs 4 mos

• Nationwide sales of Analytics, Data Management, Business Intelligence, and Big Data Platform software in Pakistan. Trusted advisor for prospects and customers in the Data and Analytics domain. Led the complete sales pipeline including opportunity identification, solution design, sizing, proposal ownership, deal licensing, price negotiation, closure, and post-sale customer satisfaction.
• Coordinated efforts of IBM solution engineering architects, technical sales consultants, and account managers to identify and close opportunities and improve customer satisfaction.
• Influencing customer decisions on technology choices towards the IBM data and AI portfolio, including Information Server, DataStage, QualityStage, DB2, SPSS, Cognos, Streams, BigInsights, and Netezza.
• First DataStage Information Server Enterprise Sale in Pakistan
• First IBM Streams sale in MEA to Ufone
• First Netezza sale in MEA to Warid
• Top Seller award in 2010 for beating targets at 240%, and growing sales 500% year-on-year
• Sales Eminence award (International recognition) in 2011 for beating targets by 50%.
• 2010: YoY growth = 500%, Achieved 240% against quota
• 2011: YoY growth = 15%, Achieved 150% against quota
• 2012: YoY growth = 18%, Achieved 124% against quota
• 2013: YoY growth = -23%, Achieved 91% against quota
• 2014: YoY growth = 70%, Achieved 142% against quota

Jul 2006 – May 2009 · 2 yrs 10 mos

• Team management: Recruitment, training, performance management, and team building for 3 teams:
• Advanced analytics and business intelligence
• Technical pre-sales consultancy
• Process improvement and practice development
• Served customers across Europe, Middle East, and Africa, including Fortune 500 members of the banking and telecom sectors, including Barclays Bank and Vodafone.
• Over 3 years, drove the off-shore project delivery consultancy from $2M to $5.5M
• Additional roles and responsibilities included:
• Manage and direct marketing and communications in a business-to-business setting to raise the profile of our off-shore operations.
• Process improvement and knowledge management to improve quality and efficiency in off-shore project delivery.
• Leading and implementing an Information Security Management leading to the successful certification of the organisation to the ISO 27001 standard.
• Leading and implementing a project quality management system leading to the successful assessement of the organisation using the CMMI model.

Jan 2002 – Jul 2004 · 2 yrs 6 mos · Islāmābād, Pakistan

• Sales for software, consulting services, and hardware for data warehouse and advanced analytics systems, for banking and telecom customers.
• Initiated and led consulting practice to its first CMM assessment in EMEA.

Jun 2000 – Dec 2001 · 1 yr 6 mos · Islāmābād, Pakistan

• Responsible for daily operations and customer liaison at the federal government’s national data warehouse program at NADRA. Responsibilities included 1 central site and 7 regional sites. Initiatives included:
• ETL loading and ID Card production jobs operations management using a team of 17 developers
• BI reporting and analysis against pre-defined and ad hoc requirements using a team of 17 developers
• Developing disaster recovery strategy and monitoring implementation
• Quality Assurance planning and implementation