Who is Anupama?
Anupama is a “people first” focused leader. She is passionate about building high-performing teams and innovative solutions. During her 20 plus year career, she has led enterprise data initiatives, technology modernization efforts, and organizational and business agility transformation. She’s built teams across global locations responsible for complex product domains and streamlining processes to improve productivity.
Anupama is equally passionate about Girls in STEM and Women in technology and leadership.
Anupama lives in Southlake TX with her husband Sanjeev and 2 girls Aaryana and Tatthva. She enjoys running, reading and traveling with family in her free time.
Tell us more about your role in Actabl.
My current role at Actabl is Senior Vice President of Technology and Delivery. I lead Product engineering, Data & Analytics, DevOps/cloud, IT Ops and Technical Services across the Actabl portfolio.
I am responsible for defining and driving the technology strategy of the company. Responsible for driving and delivering the vision of Actabl as a new choice platform for a unified, end-to-end technology solution capable of serving as the digital backbone for Hospitality operations and analytics.
What is the most difficult part of your job? But the most rewarding one?
Grooming the next generation leaders is the most rewarding part of my role and the
most difficult as well. People are amazing, they come from diverse backgrounds, perspectives and aspirations. Working with them to identify their strengths and enabling them to achieve their personal and professional goals. It is most rewarding to see them grow and be successful.
Is there anything that you would change about your professional path?
Growing up I was always told by my mentors (parents in early stages, teachers,
professors later on) to put my best effort and the results will follow. As I grew up in the leadership role, I came to realize putting your best efforts is not enough, there is a need to bring visibility to your work through networking, connections and having champions who speak for you. So, expecting my work to speak for itself and expecting career growth or recognition to be automatic is something I would go back 20 years and change. It is never in auto-mode.
What’s your key strategy for the development of your company?
At Actabl, we are working on integrating multiple products in the hospitality operations space onto a single platform. Technology will be the key enabler to build out the unified, end-to-end solution for hospitality operations. Delivering innovative solutions faster to the market and ease of adoptions of our solutions is our focus. Each of our solutions are well recognized in the industry and highly successful, seamless integration and bringing the data together across each of the products to drive business outcomes for us and our clients is our focus.
What do you think about the next period of time, keeping in mind the pandemic and the new business climate? How will your industry be affected?
Hospitality industry and our business have seen a low period during COVID. COVID pushed the hospitality industry to be innovative. Our software solutions had to quickly adapt to meet the changing demands of the hotels and their guests. With uptick in travel and hotels back to pre- COVID guest traffic, hotels still face some challenges creating further opportunity to innovate and meet the changing needs of the hotels and their guests. Guests are looking for seamless integration (home/phone to hotel room) of their entertainment, temperature settings etc. Easy check-in and check-out, keyless entry is still top of mind for the guests. Customization & Automation is key for the best guest experience. Hotel owners and staff need data at their fingertips to deliver this experience. Technology, integrations, data and insights will be the drivers in the hospitality industry and Actabl is ready to deliver these insights to our clients.
Please name a few technologies which have the greatest impact on your business.
Data Insights will be the key driver and focus for us. We have huge amounts of data collected through our robust integrations and applications that can help our clients make informed data-driven decisions to deliver their business outcomes. Leveraging data from varied sources and advanced machine learning models, we will be delivering key and actionable insights through our BI, analytics and reporting platform.
What books do you have on your nightstand?
Current books on my nightstand are Henry Kissinger’s Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy and Adam Grant’s new book Give and Take (highly recommended by my mentor). I love history and you can learn a lot from it. Six Studies…. Is a great book if you want to understand leaders and their leadership and decision styles.
