Hari Krishna doesn’t think it’s enough to simply do his job. He wants to be a thought leader.
Krishna works in healthcare IT, as the head of IT, transversal and analytics solution center for animal health company Merial, which was acquired by Boehringer Ingelheim in 2017. In addition to revolutionizing the technology infrastructure at the company, Krishna enjoys sharing his knowledge with peers in his industry at various speaking engagements around the country.
Of these events, however, one relationship sticks out in Krishna’s mind as particularly rewarding and memorable. Krishna has been invited to several conferences hosted by IBM to speak about the cutting-edge initiatives he has been instrumental in completing during his time at Merial.
The relationship began when Krishna spoke at an IBM conference in 2011 about his work upgrading Merial to the Cognos business intelligence system. At the time of the project, Merial was only one of first few companies to be using the Cognos 10. Krishna was invited to speak after an IBM executive visited Merial’s office to observe the results of the Cognos transformation and was impressed by what he saw. Krishna spoke in front of about 100 people at the event. But this wouldn’t be the last time Krishna and IBM crossed paths.
Not long after, Krishna delivered an address at another IBM conference discussing his work to implement a state-of-the-art financial planning system at Merial. He spoke in front of about one hundred in a session about financial budgeting and forecasting by transforming from Cognos planning to TM1.
Then, in 2013, Krishna found himself on the forefront of yet another huge topic in healthcare: social media analytics and cloud-based solutions. Many companies understand that these tools can be critical to connect with patients and customers, but they aren’t quite sure how to leverage the platforms to deliver business results.
In partnership with IBM, Krishna spearheaded a cutting-edge effort to bring social media components to the cloud. A project of this magnitude normally takes companies about six months to complete, but Krishna was able to take the new system live within five days, thanks to his working relationship with IBM. Because of this incredible achievement, IBM asked Krishna to give a keynote address at one of their major conferences in 2015.
Moving forward, Krishna will continue focusing on how to leverage the power of artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and cloud solutions, because there is still so much untapped potential in those platforms, he says.
*Hari Krishna is currently working as Head IT GBE Program Management at Boehringer-Ingelheim.
