martin asencio's interview for epam info

8/4/2019 Martin Asencio's Interview for EPAM Info

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Martin Asencio: "I became an IT-geek, when I first saw a

matrix printer"

—06.09.11 12:12— Yauhen Kamenka

Martin Asencio, VP, Technology Solutions, and Head of Thomson Reuters CBU, shared his

ideas about work as fun, role of angels and people, good deeds initiative, his love to

gadgets and the difference between the Salsa and Merengue. In between, he explained

why TR is not an isolated island; how Innovation Labs make people playing with

technologies and how common employees can change the company’s perspective.

— How did you decide to start an IT-career?

— I fell in love with a matrix printer. It was 1985, and a friend of mine bought a RadioShack

TRS-80 model 3 computer! I wasn’t amazed with its screen, as I had already seen numerous

video games. But when I saw the printer, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. It produced8 characters per second with this majestic “Zzzzzzz” sound, and I was impressed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80



Interesting, that at that point of time, there was no IT-career in Dominican Republic, as far

as I come from this country. I went to the university and became a civil engineer. I’m still

licensed to build houses there, but I have never built anything. My father is an architect and

he has a construction company.

— How does it correspond with IT?

— You know, many civil engineers in Dominican Republic found themselves in IT, mostly

because they were taught to make calculations and perceive structural data. My work in IT

started with building petrol and accounting systems, alongside different PCs of that time likeUNIX, Xenix, CTOS. I was working when I started my civil engineer course. Being 20-21, I was

a manager of IT-department.

I remember it was very hard, as far as I was working all day, and went to the university, then

was meeting my friends to do all the homework. Sometimes I just fell asleep on top of the

books. It was hard but it was fun to build all that things. I had the best team in the world,

and still keep in touch with them.

May be due to my personality I like to play with things nobody is doing. Now, at EPAM, we

can experiment with many things which are not common. Years ago, we are talking about

1989, I was dealing with Unix. Not many companies were using Unix. We had no language to

build a good UI, no editing utilities; we needed to code everything and convert it to suit the

development environment. We were building accounting systems, warehouse inventory

systems, production control systems – everything from scratch. At the same time we had to

understand business side, as far as our applications contributed to a certain business,

accounting or HR, etc. I got an early exposure to business, you know. It made me mature

earlier. Sometimes we see this at EPAM, when we are mentoring our managers and giving

them more sensibility to the business agenda.

Then I went for almost 2 years to the US with a scholarship and got a Master degree in

information systems. Then I came back home, afterwards I moved to the US and started

working with one outsourcing company.

— How did you start with EPAM?



— I have a very good friend Karl Robb, who is the Head of our EU Operations. We worked

together for another outsourcing company before he left and created his company, which

later merged with EPAM. He invited me to join EPAM in 2005. My first assignment was to

take over Thomson Reuters and Oracle accounts. At that point Oracle was known as

Hyperion.

— Have you noticed any changes within the company since you joined it?

— Sure. When I joined EPAM, there were probably 1500 of us. Now we have grown and this

has forced us to re-think how the company is organized; and how to leverage the

experience we have got over the years better. The company has matured; we are more

confident now when we talk to a customer, because we have all these great references that

we can show in almost any technology and platform. And the customer satisfaction has

been also keen; we have a lot of business referrals, our clients are happy to provide.

I’m not any more responsible for the Oracle, from the beginning of the year, mostly because

of the size of Thomson Reuters account. Also we decided that it was more logical to have

other people, from West Coast, deal with Oracle, as far as it is based in California.

But both teams were really incredible from the very beginning. Oracle grew from 30+

people; now they are 130. Reuters has grown from 40+ to 800 people. There were 6 TR

Conferences in its history, and every time I see new faces, as far as we grew 200+ people

since last year. It’s a challenge to grow that much and still do more. And that’s why we’ve

been trying to accomplish the CBU.

— How do you treat a concept of the CBU?

— The concept of the Client Business Unit appeared probably 2 years ago and was aimed to

put most focus on client. Clients like TR demand a special attention. We can really provide

more value by understanding how they operate; by keeping the knowledge of their

technology and products. We believe our teams are really close to their strategy. That’s why

the CBU is an organism that has full responsibility and resources of the account. We are able

to react more quickly; to make more effective decisions; to align with the customer and his

needs.

— What is the role of people in this chain?

— Since last year, we’ve been putting many efforts on people. We did a great job, having

applied great technologies, having grown technically confident talents, and that was a good

moment to turn to people now.



My recent idea about our work is to have fun. I think there is a great difference between an

ability to provide people with growth opportunities and fun. You can provide first, but forget

about second. In some countries, when a man gets in prison, he can get a university degree,

but he will hardly get lots of fun.

I think people put a lot of weight on the feeling, that they are working with right team; that

they like the colleagues they work with; that they like how they are treated; that they really

look forward to come to work every day. A job task a person can be given is quite

demanding and stressful. People need to find way to relax, reenergize and go back to work.

Support and maintenance of a client’s service won’t bring fun every day, but when there is

fun around you, or the environment is very supportive and encouraging — that will make a

real difference of how you perform.

— How to put this idea into reality?

— That’s a very interesting task! As for me, I need to bridge a cultural gap. What makes me

happy is not exactly the same what makes happy guys there. We have an instant feedback.

Our approach is to put all the guys into discussion and make them decide what should be

done. Sitting in TR office, you can see that all the interiors are remodeled. This remodeling

was run completely by the guys, they took over this project. We have a manager who stays

in touch with people and collects all the ideas towards our working area. We have football

machines. It wasn’t my idea, as far as I don’t play football.



Soon we are going to run our internal employee satisfaction survey, where we’ll try to

identify the areas, where we need to pay more attention. Of course, it won’t replace day-to-

day and face-to-face communication, which happens between managers and subordinates.

We want to persuade guys, that their voice matters, and we want to change the perception

that nothing is going to change. It doesn’t mean that we don’t know what our problems are.

We just need to confirm, that we are putting our efforts in right place.

— Is that why Martin’s Angels are flying around the office?

— Martin’s Angels are a support team for the whole account. They call them Martin’s

Angels, in accordance with Charlie's Angels. Earlier, in the beginning of this year I was

thinking what should be my tag and my Angels’ role for this year… They put it as “Care and

Act”.

I think that one thing that we miss is that we have a habit of looking away from the

problem, or promise small to big problems. Like, this room is very hot and air conditioning is

not working… yeahhh…. It’s warm — and everybody leaves the room with no intention to

ask for help. Or no paper in the restroom. These things are small things, but they are

followed by big and essential issues…



Interesting that we don’t deal with a client in such a way. We are very good in getting big

things with a client. But all the things around us… we shouldn’t treat them differently.

Another issue I want to promote is our Good Deeds program. Today it is a very small group

of volunteers, who initially started to act inside the TR group, who want to help people

inside and outside the company. I hope, as a wildfire it will spread all-round the company,

with people creating committees and charity groups. That we’ll be great!

It all shows that if you wish it, let’s do it. It is a challenge to produce these things not only in

Minsk, but in every office and country, where we are present. As we are one team, it

doesn’t matter, where you live.

— Are you ready to share your ideas inside the whole company?

— We have already exported some ideas, which we have implemented already inside the

CBU, like Innovation Lab. Recently, it has been a successful launch of Innovation Lab insidethe MTV team, while Wolters Kluwer guys used our know-hows and tools to make their

internal conference, etc.

It’s not only our achievement, as far as we are supported by EPAM’s HR team, who run

many organization issues. We are not an island. We are EPAM. This message should be clear

to anyone. We depend a lot on GDOs, local managers outside other groups to get things

done. We are not living in the insolated space. We really need to look for the goals of the

company, the wealth-being of the company and we always keep this in mind when making

decisions.

— How did the Innovation Lab appear in EPAM?

— Every year we conduct a customer satisfaction survey, with over hundred responses to

what we are doing. When we started to analyze the feedback 4 years ago, we found that the

client had a perception that we were not innovative. It was a certain concern for us but I

understand how this notion appeared. For years, we’ve been running mostly support, QA,

and we’ve had no intention to think over architecture or other solutions. We just did what

the customer told us to do.

Innovation Lab was aimed to change the perception of the customer towards how we can

improve TR products by bringing new ideas, which we could incorporate in their products or

processes. There were over 140 ideas offered during the lab and 13 of them have been

already implemented on the customer side.

Another goal was to create a playground for the guys, who were doing their routine every-

day tasks, where they could discuss their ideas, playing with technologies in playful and

energizing environment.

— Have you managed to change the perception?



— Since then, there is a precise correlation between our growth and Innovation Labs. The

whole Mobile started from one concept, offered during Innovation Lab, with 70 positions

up-to-date. We are the biggest vendor to this division of TR, on Mobile services.

— You started with the printer. What is the role of gadgets in your life today?

— It’s a right question addressed to the right person. I’m a gadget geek. I follow all posts at

engadget and other publications. I think that these things are aimed to change the future

and our perception of the world. We do not feel disconnected anymore. All technologies

have enabled you to perform as a Robocop – they make you more powerful than before. I

start every morning from reading e-mails and rss feed from, let’s say, CNet, getting news

from technology, devices, IT-companies, etc. And I understand that producing certain

technology, I contribute to the change of the society.

— There are many talks about Martin dancing Salsa…

— I want to make an important correction! I dance Merengue. The thing is that people often

confuse Salsa and Merengue. I’ll have to write an article some day with describing the

differences. Merengue is our national dance. It is very easy to perform and learn. It is like a

march. Salsa and Bachata are more complicated; they are more beautiful in terms of music,

but much difficult to dance. During every conference I’m asked to dance. And I dance

Merengue. In my country everyone is born with the rhythm of this music. Dominican

Republic is a melting pot of different nationalities and very strong African roots, with cool

dancing traditions. By the way, my wife comes from Peru and we have 3 kids, 15, 7 and a

baby-girl of 3. They are some of my motivation to do my best.

martin asencio's interview for epam info

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