Balaji Thomas: Expeditiously Tapping Onto The Dormant Potential Of It Simplification & Automation
Balaji Thomas
President & CEO
"Business process planning & strategy formulation is a daunting and time consuming task, and it can never be well executed without a proper tech integrated framework"
Established in 2013 Muraai is the brainchild of Balaji Thomas who is also the President & CEO of the company. Initially, having worked for GE APAC (IT dept.)for over 17 years, Balaji holds versatile experience across the IT simplification & automation. Under his IT leadership he has done 3 ERP implementations and multiple Business Transformation IT initiatives. He also specializes in BPM and Enterprise Content Solutions, and is currently leading Muraai towards zenith through IT service & consulting. Engaging in an exclusive interaction with CEOInsights, Balaji shares insight on the productive IT service & consulting of Muraai offered to enterprises across industries.
Give us a brief detail about your educational background and professional background and how has it inspired you to incept Muraai amidst the IT space?
After completing my business administration, I started my professional career with GE APAC in 1992, where I had the opportunity to play different roles within GE’s IT wing, beginning with the Lighting business(G Lighting) to looking after the legacy systems. It was also then, I indeed realized how digitalization can help automate businesses dramatically. Later, transcending from a junior position to heading the IT team in 2000, and then getting a leadership role (with merger of 5 different GE businesses) to manage the entire IT for the Group of businesses (GE lighting Power Controls, Appliances, Equipment, & Digital Energy busi
nesses) in 2003, I also got abreast with multiple ERP tools like Oracle, QAD SAP & more including Lean Six Sigma. Also, I slowly graduated into the process of streamlining those learnings into the IT through automation, while also ensuring that the application is sustained & controlled for a longer time.
I then knew, IT is the only way forward, but it was also quite soon after I realized that ERPs serve to only 20percent of any business’ needs, and still left the rest 80 percent for the other IT solutions & services providers. However, the resort to this open 80 percent business needs seemed to be very enchanting to me discovering BPM (a Business Process Management tool that can integrate with the underlying ERP platforms and still ensure that everything is intact looking for additional business needs),developed by Jan Baan, a serial entrepreneur & capitalist who also built BAAN, Cordys & others. Anyone could actually design the business process the way they want it, implying the UI layer that is helping to construct the business applications. Hence, I realized this ever persisting demand within organizations and taking a leap of faith stepped in as an entrepreneur in 2010 and created a business there realizing it in 2013.
Define Muraai Information Technologies as an organization.
Today, in this tech driven world, business process planning & strategy formulation is a daunting and time consuming task and it can never be well executed without a proper tech integrated framework. This is where Muraai’s unique BPM platform plays a significant role serving the tech needs of businesses by cutting down the life cycle of a project through deployment of a pre built component integrated with the under lying ERP solutions.
Our specialized technologyled solutions offer a distinctive value proposition with diverse capabilities fine tuned to the industry led business needs (FMCG, Manufacturing, Retail, Service, and Pharma). Also, we have extended our capabilities from a premier supplier of services & IT Consulting to the product side as well, where Muraai has built an end-to-end Procure to Pay solution, starting from e-procurement process tools like RFX, like RFX, RFP, RFQ, etc going on to Auction and Bidding portal, Vendor On boarding, Vendor
If you are looking for turning your Accounts Payable into a profit center you should connect with Muraai immediately
I then knew, IT is the only way forward, but it was also quite soon after I realized that ERPs serve to only 20percent of any business’ needs, and still left the rest 80 percent for the other IT solutions & services providers. However, the resort to this open 80 percent business needs seemed to be very enchanting to me discovering BPM (a Business Process Management tool that can integrate with the underlying ERP platforms and still ensure that everything is intact looking for additional business needs),developed by Jan Baan, a serial entrepreneur & capitalist who also built BAAN, Cordys & others. Anyone could actually design the business process the way they want it, implying the UI layer that is helping to construct the business applications. Hence, I realized this ever persisting demand within organizations and taking a leap of faith stepped in as an entrepreneur in 2010 and created a business there realizing it in 2013.
Define Muraai Information Technologies as an organization.
Today, in this tech driven world, business process planning & strategy formulation is a daunting and time consuming task and it can never be well executed without a proper tech integrated framework. This is where Muraai’s unique BPM platform plays a significant role serving the tech needs of businesses by cutting down the life cycle of a project through deployment of a pre built component integrated with the under lying ERP solutions.
Our specialized technologyled solutions offer a distinctive value proposition with diverse capabilities fine tuned to the industry led business needs (FMCG, Manufacturing, Retail, Service, and Pharma). Also, we have extended our capabilities from a premier supplier of services & IT Consulting to the product side as well, where Muraai has built an end-to-end Procure to Pay solution, starting from e-procurement process tools like RFX, like RFX, RFP, RFQ, etc going on to Auction and Bidding portal, Vendor On boarding, Vendor
Contract Management, Vendor Self Service Portal, Vendor Help desk, Supplier Invoice Automation System(SIMS),Receipt to Records etc. are a significant part of it helping Customers & Suppliers hugely at the business front.
If you are looking for turning your Accounts Payable into a profit center you should connect with Muraai immediately. Recently OpenText has recognized as OpenText SolEx Gold Partner for their Supplier Invoice Management system which helps organizations to digitize end to end Accounts Payable process.
Why did you choose Bangalore to be the breeding ground of your company? How has been the place favoring you so far in Muraai’s operations?
Well, it was of course because I was located here, and second, obviously it’s well known that Bangalore the ‘Silicon Valley of India’ is an IT hub and there’s enough skillset & talent pool drawing in from different parts of the country which is quite beneficial for a business to run prolifically. Also, the technical partnership is easy to find here, over the manpower and intellectual advantages.
How do you maintain the perfect balance between your personal & professional life?
I am a work a holic person, so there’s no big demarcation for personal& professional life. There’s time for each be it entre preneurial, personal or family. I like spending my personal time at gym everyday routinely, while also take out time for my wife and two kids. However, as an IT entre preneur, there’s a clock in time, but no clock out time because of global time zones.
Highlight the changes in market behaviour that you anticipate and what are the opportunities that you foresee?
The market behavior is very conducive I assume, with COVID pandemic hovering over. Almost every business is looking for digitalization which is favorable to the IT businessthat we are into today. Though, the change isn’t bigger concerning my expectations, but I am thankful enough to COVID for being able to witness the people getting triggered to at least think digitally and turn to working online, instead of offline. There are many things to cater to in order to fulfil people’s digitalization needs through IT enabling.
What advice would you give to the budding entrepreneurs?
Be determined, never give up tiring or weakening by the failures as failures are bound to happen, instead we should keep moving in the right direction and things will eventually fall in place. So, that’s what I have been doing all these years, and I would suggest the same to the others out there.
Balaji Thomas, President & CEO, Muraai Information Technologies
With skills in IT Simplification & Automation Balaji has leadership traits for businesses’ IT Service &Consulting needs
If you are looking for turning your Accounts Payable into a profit center you should connect with Muraai immediately. Recently OpenText has recognized as OpenText SolEx Gold Partner for their Supplier Invoice Management system which helps organizations to digitize end to end Accounts Payable process.
Why did you choose Bangalore to be the breeding ground of your company? How has been the place favoring you so far in Muraai’s operations?
Well, it was of course because I was located here, and second, obviously it’s well known that Bangalore the ‘Silicon Valley of India’ is an IT hub and there’s enough skillset & talent pool drawing in from different parts of the country which is quite beneficial for a business to run prolifically. Also, the technical partnership is easy to find here, over the manpower and intellectual advantages.
How do you maintain the perfect balance between your personal & professional life?
I am a work a holic person, so there’s no big demarcation for personal& professional life. There’s time for each be it entre preneurial, personal or family. I like spending my personal time at gym everyday routinely, while also take out time for my wife and two kids. However, as an IT entre preneur, there’s a clock in time, but no clock out time because of global time zones.
Highlight the changes in market behaviour that you anticipate and what are the opportunities that you foresee?
The market behavior is very conducive I assume, with COVID pandemic hovering over. Almost every business is looking for digitalization which is favorable to the IT businessthat we are into today. Though, the change isn’t bigger concerning my expectations, but I am thankful enough to COVID for being able to witness the people getting triggered to at least think digitally and turn to working online, instead of offline. There are many things to cater to in order to fulfil people’s digitalization needs through IT enabling.
What advice would you give to the budding entrepreneurs?
Be determined, never give up tiring or weakening by the failures as failures are bound to happen, instead we should keep moving in the right direction and things will eventually fall in place. So, that’s what I have been doing all these years, and I would suggest the same to the others out there.
Balaji Thomas, President & CEO, Muraai Information Technologies
With skills in IT Simplification & Automation Balaji has leadership traits for businesses’ IT Service &Consulting needs