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What makes her slightly different from most of her peers is the technical expertise Ritu Madbhavi brought to the enterprise. She started her career in the software industry at TCS, worked for four years, took a break for three years to move with her husband, a software professional, to Switzerland and then came back to India in 1996 to join Datamatics in Pune. The move to FCB Ulka happened a year later. Says Madbhavi, “I wanted to continue in a technical role, but did not want to stay in software as the dynamics of the industry did not suit me at that point in time.” She had the responsibility of her small son and could not stay away from home on projects as software professionals are often required to do.

FCB Ulka was a blessing in disguise and worked out to be the perfect transition for Madbhavi. Says the lady who moved into the advertising agency as a systems manager nine years back, “Advertising is less protocol and hierarchy driven unlike most traditional enterprises and there is no resistance to technology.” It was after she joined that software development started in-house at the agency.

In the last nine years, Madbhavi has not just spearheaded key technology implementations at Ulka but has pioneered deployments like 'digital archival' in the industry. Before digital archival happened, there was major chaos at the creative end. Creative used to work with huge file sizes and it was not possible to use these files as part of the standard backup system. Even the hard disc was a lot more expensive nine years back. So the IT team developed software to archive every single layout and artwork. Today, every artwork is available with the user segment on a 24x7 basis.

In 1999, the mail solution was changed from MS Exchange to Linux-based Sendmail. In 2004, administration difficulties such as the tedious process of adding and deleting new users, lack of simple interface for basic functions necessitated a change. Says Madbhavi, “The move to transfer our mail server on Linux was taken after a lot of evaluation and cost-benefit analysis, and we paid peanuts.”

Today IT has been transformed from a cost center to a profit center at Ulka. Madbhavi personally heads Interface Interactive, an arm of Interactive Communications that integrates traditional direct marketing and the Internet to provide clients with a seamless, single minded solution across the two media. The team today comprises of database specialists, web technology people, account planners, and dedicated creative and servicing people.

Madbhavi has seen herself evolve from a technologist to a strategic business leader in the enterprise. “The key question I'm trying to answer all the time today is how I can leverage technology to improve business efficiency and improve the core business,” says Madbhavi who has struck this perfect balance of keeping some of the key development activities in-house and outsourcing operations like facilities management. FCB Ulka is part of her system today. And the only time she is not handling technology is when she's cooking non-traditional food-which she loves to do.

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