Wipro at OpenWorld 2011

N S Bala is the Senior Vice President and Global Head for the Manufacturing & High-Tech Industry Strategic Business Unit of Wipro Technologies. The 8000 people strong division focuses on enabling organizations in the Manufacturing industry transform their business in an ever changing economic environment by using IT as a lever to make them more agile and responsive across the entire value chain - areas such as customer management, manufacturing, supply chain, product engineering etc. He has also been instrumental in driving innovation in delivery through models such as the Factory Model and Center for Integrated Global Management of Applications (Cigma).

During his stint at Wipro, Bala has been through the transformation experienced in the Indian IT industry and has also been a key contributor to Wipro’s journey in becoming one of the prominent players among the global service providers. Bala has been instrumental in pioneering the use of Toyota Production Systems principles in application & software development that was developed into a case study by the Harvard Business School and is being taught at the institute to MBAs. He was invited by Harvard to speak on the case study. The delivery model has also been featured in the book, Bangalore Tiger by Steve Hamm. His recent innovation, Cigma, won Wipro the NASSCOM Innovation Award. Bala has been a speaker at Supply Chain conferences, Outsourcing conferences and other forums such as SAPPHIRE, Oracle Open World during his years in the industry. He holds a MBA degree from the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, one of the premier management institutes in India.

Mike qualified as an Electronic Engineer with EMI Limited and first entered the Retail sector in 1982. During this time Mike has gained a wealth of experience in people management, programme delivery and business leadership. With a particular strength in change management Mike has been a driving force behind the success of Wipro Retail and formerly, Enabler (acquired by Wipro in 2006) where he was UK CEO and a member of the Executive Board.

His depth of knowledge spans the working breadth of retail, understanding the importance of each facet of retail life through the spectrum of supply chain to point of sale, and how best to drive commercial value whilst reducing cost to the retailer. During his time in retail he has worked on both the buyer and supply side of the industry which gives him valuable insights into mutually beneficial relationships.

Now Vice President of Wipro Retail, Mike has led this division of Wipro Technologies to grow successfully over the past years with a strong outlook for 2010. He is also part of the worldwide RCTG (Retail, Consumer Goods, Transportation and Government) vertical Leadership team and a member of the Wipro Technologies European leadership team.