Francisco Armstrong, USA
I moved to Reno from San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2013, and in February 2014 I started work in the BPM industry as a temporary employee in order processing. During that time, looking for a challenge, I learned new processes and became the teams point of contact for OLS-related transactions and POET issues. My role was made permanent in December 2014.
Initially I had been interested becoming a team manager or subject matter expert (SME). However, a different opportunity presented itself when upon recommendation from a co-worker and now friend, in Feb 2015, I started inquiring about opportunities for growth in the top-volume OEM team. I was hired into that team in April 2015 and from then on, I worked directly with the client providing white glove service to key accounts. During that time, I developed an interest in big data and assisted the team with reports. I learned new skills in Visual Basic, Excel, Access, and more importantly SQL and Power BI.
After a few years and upon learning all I could with that team, I started looking for new challenges and opportunities. With my newly acquired skills, my management team suggested that I may enjoy a role within a business intelligence (BI) team. With their support, I reached out to the BI team manager to get information about BI roles and to show interest in a potential move. Months later, a BI role opened and I was hired in August 2019. My new role involved extremely different responsibilities which include developing datasets, reports and dashboards in SQL and Power BI that would assist and impact the whole organization; presenting to all levels of the organization, including high-level clients, and global leaders in Infosys; troubleshooting BI issues and more.
In December 2019, I was invited to take part in a global automation opportunities workshop in AOC, and immediately thereafter travelled to the Philippines and Singapore, where I spent 2 weeks for a BI summit and APOC leadership meet and greet. Despite working extremely hard and sometimes long hours since starting with BI, I have not felt like I have worked a day, as I am doing something I love.
Milena Fedisz, Poland
I started my BPM journey in December 2014 with Infosys BPM. My first role was as a process specialist responsible for communication with partners and cooperating with the team and third parties.
My first major task was a ‘Go Green’ plan in my unit. Easier said than done! However, step by step, after dozens of calls, many more actions, and several improvements, we were able to achieve the goal. The key element of a successful project is proper analysis before implementation of even the simplest step – to make sure we are working on the right thing.
In the meantime, I managed to give birth to my lovely daughter. After maternity leave, I came back to the online team in 2017 as an SME with a completely new team. I received new tasks such as working on the escalation process and, again, process improvements. Thanks to that experience, in 2018 I was promoted as a team lead. This was very demanding; nevertheless, with the team we managed to create a very strong and dedicated crew. It was a tough journey for the whole team, but now it is so satisfying to see how we all developed by working together and learning from each other.
Recently my project and planning capabilities have been tested again as I was responsible for the implementation of process-based approach in Lodz Centre. It was a very demanding project as transformation changed the way we work and how we are organized, but once again my team proved that they are the best in the world and I really appreciate their involvement and dedication.
Currently I am holding a team lead role in the claims process and am a global program leader for the biggest partner incentives programs. Personally, in my daily work, I try to follow the motto from William A. Foster that I think best describes how I work: “Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skilful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives."
Grzegorz Szalinski, Poland
This short story begins in late 2017 when I became a part of the Channel Incentives team. This was a very new experience to me as I had never worked in this combination of customer service and data analysis environment – an environment welcoming an open mind set and new ideas, as it turned out.
In 2018 I was asked to take the lead in a project aimed at improving our service by implementing more partner-centric culture. As our client started receiving feedback from partners about their dissatisfaction from repetitive and robot-like emails, we came up with a project to address and gradually erase that perception. It made me delve further into the customer service world which I found really enjoyable. Additionally, I received a huge amount of trust, support, and knowledge from my manager. It did not stop me from making mistakes, but it was a great encouragement whenever things went sideways.
The project was successful as we were able to decrease the number of escalations significantly in a trial support area. It also gained positive feedback from the client, and so we were ready to deploy it globally. As I got more positive feedback from the partner and stakeholder sides, I was invited to the CES improvement project where I can collaborate with the Infosys quality and client teams. This was my next step in the customer service journey where I could learn more about our client’s goals and gain knowledge from far more experienced specialists.
Gavin McSweeney, Ireland
I have been working in BPM for almost eight years now. I started my tenure in 2012 as a transaction specialist, in a team of about 30 people. After 18 months on the team I moved into a senior position. Then in November 2014, I was promoted to a role within the Change Management team which was a huge step for me in terms of my professional development. I had to step outside my comfort zone to learn new processes and ways of working. One of the biggest challenges was shifting my mind set to taking a more proactive approach to my day to day activities. Working within support services has helped me expand my knowledge of the wider organization. I now interact with lots of different teams as well as internal and external stakeholders across the business who all provide a variety of valuable insights.
Last year, I decided I would be interested in pursuing a change of domain, and in May I was promoted into the role of Senior Quality Consultant for Dublin. As part of the training I was asked to travel to Infosys’s headquarters in Bangalore, India to take part in the Infosys Global Quality Induction program. This was great as I finally got to meet my global counterparts face to face for the first time, along with other quality folk from around the world who were also part of the program. We received some great training and one-on-one discussions from some Infosys leaders. One of the key takeaways from that experience was how we as an organisation look at quality and how it should be more than a pass or fail in a case – it should be providing a good experience overall to our clients. The past year in the quality function has been a consistent learning experience. As part of this, the remit of my current role is broad and very dynamic. I am quite confident that the next year will be just as challenging but even more rewarding.
Maricruz Cervantes Segura, Costa Rica/Poland
I joined Infosys in December 2015 working for a large client account in Costa Rica. Working for the new client was an exciting experience and I must admit I got passionate about my work and the processes I became responsible for. This attitude helped to quickly build rapport with partners and the client and, even more importantly, it led to tangible results for the team.
As a result, a few months later I was taking ownership for new tasks such as escalations and payments. I was doing my best, but with escalations it is never easy. From the beginning everything was going well until one day it was I who got escalated. Did I cry? Yes, a lot, I admit it. It was the first escalation in my professional life. Did I quit? No way. I faced the challenge and explored the unknown process. I documented it with every single detail I considered was needed so that it would not happen again.
While working for Infosys in Costa Rica, I heard about a mobility opportunity within the company and my guts pointed to Europe. In my one-on-ones with team leads, I was always very clear with what I wanted; I was aiming high.
Have you ever heard that phrase “Wish it so much until life has no choice but to give it to you?” It was still a dream until January 2019 when I got an offer: Work for Infosys in Lodz, Poland. It took 11 months of all the feelings you can imagine – happiness, worries, anxiety, stress – but you know what? Despite all of that, it was a big dream of mine, and Infosys was giving me an opportunity to make it true, so I was not going to give up. Period!
Yes, it took 11 months that were not easy; however, I’m currently living in Europe. I am learning about a new culture, a new and more difficult language and of course new processes still for Infosys. I have new friends. I am happy.
Dream, believe and go for it!
Natallia Kurlovich, Poland
My journey with BPM started in August 2018 when I joined CSP team as a process executive. I started to work with EOC region, and later joined the LOC region transition project.
After gaining experience with CSP, I was ready to widen my scope, and at the same time I joined the Top Partners Team where I got the opportunity to work hand in hand with our client’s biggest partners. In order to provide the most important strategic partners with holistic white-glove service, my team and I have been successfully working on finding scalable solutions together with CSP support leads, global program managers, technical teams and support SMEs.
I am lucky to work with very experienced management team who has always guided me on my learning path and helped me overcome all the possible underwater stones. I must admit that their wide knowledge and professionalism really contributed to my growth, and I will always be grateful to all of the people I met during my professional journey.
Robert Kaczmarek, Poland
My journey with Infosys blasted off in August 2016, at which point I joined the Evolving Campaigns team with a major client; within the team, I was assigned to support a brand-new sub-team – Campaigns Calculations. The project itself had been formed and taken live merely a month earlier; therefore, two of my sub-team colleagues and I were given the opportunity to design the process on our own holistically. This new ‘standard’ campaigns capability was met with a warm welcome from our client representatives, and it was, without a doubt, a stepping stone. We managed to build a trusted relationship and long-term partnership with our client.
Having put a lot of effort into the initial phase of the calculations project, I started serving as a global subject matter expert after a few months after joining the team. Thanks to this position, I had the opportunity to delve into more and more complex activities with our remit, work hand-in-hand with global program managers on the process scaling and its development. As the team was constantly expanding its scope, I started getting more and more experience related to driving results and managing two sub-teams.
Last autumn, I was lucky enough and given the opportunity to play a key role within the incubation phase and overall coordination of a brand-new project. The project’s remit was mainly concentrated on delivering top-notch service and facilitating the call possibility for the most strategic partners so as to ensure that their experience is of the highest quality.
The experience I gained handling tough clients and supporting my former team lead’s activities paved the way for my becoming a team lead at the beginning of 2019. In this past year, I got up to speed in terms of managing the team and driving crucial business-impactful conversations. What is my biggest inspiration at work? It’s definitely the amazing folks that I have the privilege to work with on a daily basis – my motto is “Together everyone achieves more”, which appears to me to be the true definition of TEAM.
Geraldine Wong, Singapore
As a trainer, I have always believed in continuous learning. The constant expansion of skills through increasing knowledge is especially important as it facilitates adaptation to a changing work environment and new project developments. A challenge should always be viewed as a learning opportunity and future challenges as a means to apply what you have learned.
One example of this is when I had to redesign a learning management system with my engineering team as it had been renounced by employees for being “too complicated”. I had to learn what the system was meant to be used for and to coincide it with what the end users wanted it to be used for. In the end, the redesigned system was much better received, and because of this, when I moved on to my next company to design a new learning management system with another engineering team, I was much better placed to complete this new system with more functionalities.
All of this led to me joining the Training Team last year and being introduced to our large-scale technology and process transformation program. This was, in a way, my learning management system. If I could learn what it was meant to be used for, I could plan my training to reflect what they wanted it to be used for to allow for its adaptation. I gained an understanding of the new systems and the user expectations and this led me to successfully apply for the position of Base Team Manager. I expect I will have even more learning opportunities in my new role, and I look forward to seeing where it may lead.
