For Varghese Philipose, a job well done is when his customer gets congratulated by their boss.
“One of the things I always tell new TAMs is: Don’t think about what to do. Think about what the customer wants first. Each customer has their own KPIs, so how can you help? How can you help them be the hero in front of their manager?”
What it means to be a TAM
Varghese has been at VMware for over a decade. He joined the Technical Account Management team in 2012 after working in virtualization across different organizations in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Dubai, where he’s now based. Today, Varghese is a Principal Technical Account Manager (TAM) where he works closely alongside his long-term customers and mentors new TAMs. He is also a member of Global Field, Office of the CTO, a VMware group focused on looking over the horizon — exploring, inspiring, researching, and innovating to impact the future.
“From the beginning of my career, I’ve always been in customer-facing roles. I have always wanted to be part of customers’ IT strategic transformation journey, but also wanted to maintain the technical aspect of my work. That’s why the TAM role is so special. You get to shape, drive, live, and be a part of the customer’s transformation, hand in hand with them.”
Varghese has worked with the same customers for over six years, one of which was his first customer more than ten years ago when he first joined VMware as a Technical Account Manager. As a result, Varghese’s customers don’t just see him as a vendor; they see him as an extension of their team.
TAMs work alongside VMware customers to help them implement new technologies and streamline operations. So, they’re not only there to help solve issues in a crisis; they’re also there to catch them in the first place, ultimately saving their customers time and money. A lot of money, too, it turns out.
Forrester Research interviewed 13 organizations using VMware and found that they saw an ROI of 478% over three years. Based on their review, Forrester developed an online ROI Estimator tool for anyone to use. It provides an estimate of the potential cost savings that an organization could achieve—see how much you could save yours.
For Varghese’s customers, though, it’s about more than just ROI; it’s about having someone by their side. Because Varghese has been with the same customers for years, he knows each organization inside and out. He knows their goals, and he makes them his own.
Creating the Sustainability Dashboard
This journey began with a customer from the Utility industry in the Middle East who was just starting with datacenter virtualization. They were supporting a nationwide initiative meant to reduce power consumption and wanted to showcase how the consolidation of their data center with VMware virtualization helped them achieve this objective.
“We started by creating an Excel spreadsheet, but the Datacenter Operations Manager asked me if we could show something in an executive dashboard. So that’s where I started looking at Aria Operations (previously called vRealize Operations).” Varghese went to the Aria Operations product and engineering teams with this customer challenge. Together, they identified a key energy metric that could help them create a power savings visualization dashboard for the customer.
“The customer was extremely impressed with this dashboard, as it captured the exact information they required. They in turn, presented this dashboard to the rest of the Governmental Ministerial Leaders, demonstrating exactly how much carbon emissions they had saved by virtualizing the data centers.” This metric became the backbone of the sustainability dashboards in Aria Operations which Varghese recalls as one of the biggest highlights of his work at VMware.
“After a few years, in 2021, when that dashboard came into the product, I wrote the blog post, Sustainability Dashboards in Aria Operations 8.6 about it, and the customer called me and said, ‘That’s ours, right?’ I told him it indeed was, and he was very happy because, in his own words, “What we did changed the world. Now everybody’s using this dashboard.”
Taking customer service to the next level
That’s just how Varghese thinks. He sees the reciprocal value-add within relationships. By solving the customer’s request, Varghese went above and beyond for his customer and helped create a new product that would eventually be rolled out to hundreds of customers.
Varghese takes the same approach when mentoring the next generation of TAMs. He’s been mentoring new TAMs, like Aneesah Abdul Kadhar, for several years, which has opened his eyes to new ways of delivering excellence to his customers.
“I’ve had the pleasure of mentoring many people, but when I’m a mentor, I also benefit from the way new TAMs think. I’ve been working with my customers for ten years. I get to learn how they think about handling customers. It’s a reverse mentorship. That’s where I gain as well.”
Looking towards the future
When the Sustainability Dashboard was launched publicly in 2021, Varghese started dreaming up ideas for its expansion. While the dashboard showed customers’ current carbon footprint, customers wanted to measure how they stacked up to global or regional standards.
Varghese worked closely with Iwan Rahabok, Technology Director for Aria Operations, to create a unique algorithm showing organizations where they are in their decarbonization journey. The VMware Green Score is now patent-pending and is a game-changer for all Aria Operations customers. It was released into the product in Aria Operations Cloud as part of the October 2022 release, and the on-prem version is due for release in April 2023.
“This was a small ask from a TAM customer, and now it’s part of the whole product. Sustainability is core to VMware’s values, so when we talk about VMware’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals, this tool shows what we’re about.”
Varghese offers more information about the Sustainability Dashboard and the VMware Green Score in his blogs.
Work with a VMware TAM
Varghese’s approach is a testament to the value TAMs bring to their customers. His story highlights the importance of TAMs’ extensive knowledge of their customer’s environment, their technical expertise, and their commitment to achieving the best possible outcome.
Try out our ROI Estimator tool to get an estimate of your organization’s potential cost savings, and talk to your VMware Sales Representative about VMware Technical Account Management Services to learn more. Who knows, working with a TAM might even lead to the creation of an entirely new product solution, like the Sustainability Dashboard.
