Learning where a digital representation needs human judgement

Mandate

Make customer information and digital room representations reliable enough for their intended use

Outcomes

• Repaired the quote-production path while retaining human review of meaning
• Introduced explicit reconciliation of competing room-plan revisions
• Reviewed retained consultation recordings and narrowed the room-visualiser proposition

Decisions in context

The CIO role requires me to connect technical behaviour with the decisions people make from it. I lead forty-eight employees and twelve separate contractor positions through five leaders, with ₹11.6 crore operating expense and ₹3.2 crore approved change spending in FY2026–27. Nusrat owns enterprise recommendations, while I present the technology account without a statutory board seat. My recent work has made me more attentive to what a system appears to establish: a quote can open without preserving its text, a recent plan can omit an earlier agreement and a convincing image can imply unsupported precision. I have supported the investments needed to address those problems while keeping commercial, language, measurement and legal judgement with their proper owners. Preparing for an outside role means translating that experience into oversight questions rather than assuming that a CIO appointment already provides director experience.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; preparing for a first external non-executive opportunity

Mandate

Connect application delivery with the customer and specialist work it supported

Outcomes

• Expanded review beyond originating screens to finished customer documents
• Developed a broader account of information retained by services
• Built management experience across internal teams and contracted delivery

Decisions in context

The head-of-IT appointment widened my remit to twenty-nine employees and six contractor positions with ₹5.4 crore annual operating expense. I reported to the COO and became responsible for a service estate used across twenty-one showrooms. The job made it harder to rely on the intuition of a small application team. Different people saw different stages of the customer process, and a handoff that looked successful in one place could create uncertainty in another. I began asking teams to follow documents into the form in which customers received them, although the later language defects showed that our checks were still incomplete. I also became more involved in information a service accumulated over time. Those experiences prepared me for enterprise leadership by exposing questions that could not be resolved through a software delivery plan alone.

Reason for the move

Promoted to chief information officer

Mandate

Support the passage from customer requirements to an intelligible flooring proposal

Outcomes

• Learned the different information needs of showroom and installation colleagues
• Connected application changes with ordinary customer-document workflows
• Established a retail foundation for the later enterprise role

Decisions in context

I joined Nerqali in May 2008 with application experience from survey services and much to learn about retail. Fourteen employees and four contractor positions worked within my ₹1.8 crore annual operating remit. A customer might arrive with a sketch, a photograph or an account of how a room was used. Commercial colleagues needed a practical way to discuss the purchase, while installers needed a more precise description of the eventual work. I learned to support both needs without treating them as identical. My survey background helped me recognise when a representation required a qualified person's review, but it did not make me the owner of measurements or installation decisions. The role also taught me how a small document ambiguity could generate several later conversations across teams that each believed their own part had been completed.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead the IT function

Mandate

Support applications used by several professional teams without substituting software rules for survey judgement

Outcomes

• Developed an interest in competing revisions and their intended authority
• Managed a small team and its operating expense account
• Learned to connect technical application states with professional review

Decisions in context

Promotion in September 2001 made me accountable for eleven colleagues and ₹76 lakh annual operating expense. The technology director retained larger investment authority. I moved from helping with individual records to supporting applications used by several survey teams, each contributing information under different circumstances. That made revision behaviour especially interesting. A later file could be more recent without incorporating every relevant change, and a neat current-status label could conceal that distinction. I learned to involve the responsible professionals rather than ask an application rule to resolve a question outside its competence. The work gave me a practical understanding of how technical convenience can acquire unintended authority. Moving to Nerqali in May 2008 offered a chance to apply that experience to a continuing retail process, where information also shaped a customer's understanding of a proposed purchase.

Reason for the move

Moved into a retailer with continuing customer and installation workflows

Mandate

Represent survey information accurately under professional supervision

Outcomes

• Learned to distinguish a tidy record from a resolved measurement
• Completed a part-time computing diploma in November 1998
• Built the application foundation for a later management appointment

Decisions in context

I entered Zeruvani in July 1995 after completing my mathematics degree the previous month. I worked in a six-person group and had neither direct reports nor independent spending authority. Surveyors owned the measurements; I helped represent their work under supervision. The discipline was valuable because a record could look orderly while still containing a question that needed to return to someone who had seen the site. I learned to ask before making a convenient assumption simply to complete an entry. A part-time computing diploma, finished in November 1998, helped me understand the applications around that work while I continued in employment. The combination of field-derived information and software representation shaped my later interest in what a system is entitled to tell its users, and where it must make room for another person's professional judgement.

Reason for the move

Promoted to application manager