In today’s episode we’re joined by Sandhya Mangrulkar, Senior Manager and Salesforce CTA. Sandhya shares the details of her early career, how she came to work with Salesforce, and what she has seen to be the differences between working both onshore and offshore. Sandhya talks through the different Salesforce roles she has had and how she had focused on certain products and industries before finding her way into the pre-sales space.
Sandhya explains the benefits and drawbacks about working in a pre-sales role when it comes to attempting the CTA. She explains where her gaps were and describes what it was like to pass the CTA Review Board. Finally, Sandhya shares what is next for her in her career!
You can follow Sandhya on LinkedIn here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyamangrulkar/
We’d like to thank FlowRepublic for their support in bringing you this episode and you can find out more about their programs here:
Enjoy the chat!
Ben (00:00.31)
Sandhya, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to the show.
Sandhya Mangrulkar (00:03.558)
Hey, thanks for having me, Ben. I’ve been associated with the Salesforce ecosystem, so have known you, followed you for a long time, heard most of your podcasts, so it’s completely my privilege to be on this podcast.
Ben (00:16.53)
No, not at all. It’s definitely my pleasure. And I’m really excited to talk about your career and a career that’s taking you to a few different countries and obviously to some major achievements, which includes recently becoming the CTA that you are today. But we will cover that as we go. I like to kind of start the beginning of your journey there to set the scene for our listeners. So can you remember when in your life and where and how you first became interested in technology and decided that was going to be something you wanted to pursue as a career?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (00:51.258)
Actually, technology came to my life quite as an accident. I did my Engineering in Electronics and Telecom back in 2004, where the mobile technology was actually rising. And I thought that is where I’m going to be. Unfortunately, there was not a lot of inclusion and diversity at that point of time. And since it was a lot of field work, so Indian IT telecom companies actually preferred a lot of male candidates. So in fact, I was not even sitting in an IT campus at that point of time. Like in engineering, you have IT companies coming in. But at some point of time, I realised, let’s be practical. At least give some, you know, I have some job in hand. So that’s how I landed myself in Mastek, after some basic IT training, I started in an application development project for the UK Council. And that’s where my IT journey started and never went back to telecom.
Ben (01:50.37)
So can you tell me a bit about what that first role was like for you then in the workforce? Because it wasn’t a Salesforce role. So were you a Programmer? Were you doing development? What did that look like?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (02:02.294)
Actually, I did all. So the technology that I landed in first was a bit of an old technology. It is Ingress and OpenROAD. 90% of the world have not even heard of it. So that is what a lot of UK councils were working back in 2005. I don’t know whether they have changed. But Ingress is like Oracle database, PL/SQL, and OpenROAD is VB. But since it was so native, the project usually had struggled to get people in. So what they used to ensure is whoever comes in gets an overall development. So we used to do everything. We used to do code, code review, start writing functional requirements very early in the career. In the first year of my life, I was a DBA, also Configuration In-Charge, which is modern-day DevOps. So you get a whole SDLC experience. And luckily for me, in my two and a half years itself, I travelled to UK, was client facing, working with client directly, helping them with user acceptance, regression testing, as well as reviewing the code that was coming onshore, having playbacks with the client, also taking care of any payment issues that were coming out of UK councils, which had to be just resolved in one or two hours. And when I was back from UK, I was there for some six to seven months, I actually became the lead of the same team I had left behind. So within my four and five years in Mastek, I actually had from Developer to lead full experience. So when I left, I had a full-blown IT experience and was ready for whatever IT would throw at me. So I think my first experience was great. First job is always your first love. So I always look back at it with good memories.
Ben (04:01.75)
So obviously you mentioned that was quite niche. So was there the potential for you to continue working in that space, like the areas that you had initially landed in?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (04:11.882)
There was and is, like as I said, it is nature, there’s not many people on that. So even in the UK, I think people with Ingress and OpenROAD get highly paid because there’s not many. But yeah, actually, it quite changed for me. I got married, my husband was in a different city, and I wanted to move from Mumbai to Pune. And he was on Salesforce. And that’s how I actually landed into Salesforce. So just after our marriage, he had gone to US for a very small stint. I travelled with him. And it was a recession. So it wasn’t a great decision that I left a job and I was just travelling with my husband. But it all turned up good. There were H1Bs available. His manager decided to do H1B for both of us. And I landed in Salesforce. I was a SaaS Project Manager, Business Application Analyst. I took care of a lot of application, including Salesforce, Jira, Marketo which is now bought by Oracle, so that was my entry to SaaS world from native to directly SaaS, which was just picking up back in 2009. So this was when I remember in Dreamforce, Chatter was announced as a very big thing. They actually called it Facebook of the corporate world, and everyone was very excited. So that’s where I started Salesforce. And yeah, it’s been a nice and long journey.
Ben (05:51.414)
So at that point, obviously you mentioned your partner is or was working in Salesforce. Did you, were you actively like trying to move into the Salesforce space at that time based on what you knew? Or did it just so happen that the role you landed was also looking after Salesforce?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (06:07.45)
So somewhere I knew at that point I didn’t want to be in Ingress OpenROAD when I started. So as I said, I just had accompanied him. So because he was working on Salesforce and it was niche, I started reading about it. And it was, you know, OpenROAD Ingress, as I said, everything had to be done, you know? The screens had to be done, even if you had to create, like LWC, you have to create everything that you want to see on the screen. And it wasn’t even very code-friendly, you had to to do a lot of manual coding. So at some point when I saw Salesforce, I was like, “wow, everything comes, you just have to configure”. And that time it was more of configure and yes, obviously customisation was always there. So I liked it, I started reading it. So I was like, “okay, I’m just sitting, let me get my Salesforce Admin done”. And that’s how I fell in love and started and thankfully landed a job in the US. I was working with end user and understood the problems and could resolve it very quickly with Salesforce, which would have taken long time with the software I was working with. So yeah, that’s how I think it all started.
Ben (07:17.422)
And you had been a Developer, like you said, you kind of did everything in the first role, you did a bit of everything. Had you ever done any coding, any development work in the Salesforce space?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (07:36.102)
Not in Salesforce, I did in my previous job. That was a 15-year-old system. So I mean, apart from the application development, when the AMS used to come, we had to read the 15-year-old code. So it was scary sometimes because there’s so much code to go through and things like that. So at that point, yes, I did. But very early in the career, as I said, I moved to the project management kind of role. As I said, I never thought I would be a coder I always wanted to be in telecom so coding wasn’t my first love but I like I loved Salesforce as a product. I loved how you could marry the domain and solve the client issues very easily in using Salesforce, and somehow I never went back to coding, which was detrimental at some stages of my life. But, and some friends of mine always said, why are you so, you know, against coding? But I was like, “I don’t know, like I love designing, architecting, but coding is not my cup of tea”. And thankfully for me, I think ChatGPT has come and so I’m not afraid that I didn’t code. The world is going to be, you know, more easier for coders.
Ben (08:59.704)
Yeah, it’s interesting. And the reason I asked that question is because I think there’s this perception with some people that to be a CTA, you have to come from a development background or have, you know, a good level of technical depth in terms of development and coding. But I just wanted to draw that out, because I think people listening to this who don’t come from that background, or haven’t necessarily been a coder in the Salesforce world can take inspiration and guidance from that as well. So that’s good to know. When you returned to India, you went into consulting, right, and you were working for Arxxus, who is a company that over the years has been well known here in Australia. Obviously not so much now, but a lot of listeners will know of Arxxus in the earlier days. Having reviewed your profile, it looked like you had some specialisms. And one of them was Pardot, which to me isn’t an area that has a huge amount of, I guess, specialists in. There are some, but it’s not as popular as Marketing Cloud as an example from a career perspective. And then also you were specialising in some industry verticals. So have you found that having that specialisation has been beneficial for your career?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (10:15.71)
So as I earlier said, I have a very true believer that you need to understand the domain first, actual client problems before using technology to solve it. So from my previous experience, as I said, very closely worked with the end user. I understood their problem and somehow I got that understanding and empathy and that actually helped with me in non-for-profit. So what was happening at that point of time, even now, but Salesforce were giving 10 free licenses for non-for-profit. So the leadership wanted to automate things and the end user actually or the employees actually already struggled with time because they have to do donation, they have to do their day-to-day activities and things like that and then that IT project actually came to them as an overhead. So you know actually talking to them, understanding with empathy and delivering something that worked for them, they could easily adopt. That was actually a journey. And not everyone is very comfortable doing with non-for-profit, because you have to be very patient with them. And that time, non-for-profit was just a package. So you had to do a lot of customisation as well. So it was a great learning. Along the domain, you learned a lot of things on technology as well. Same thing for manufacturing. We were actually building a bid management solution on Opportunity. So Opportunity was just a basic object and then if you have to manage multiple bits on it, decide who wins and then you know that is the final Opportunity amount per se. That was a lot of customisation and we did it for a lot of famous manufacturing like James Hardy, Hunter Douglas, Schindler’s Lift. With Pardot, they were looking for partners to do onboarding. As you said, it’s niche, not many people out there. I had some experience with Pardot. And that’s how I landed. I travelled to Sydney, took the onboarding training. Now when I say onboarding, what they needed was help them set up Pardot so then they can start sending emails, journeys, and do everything first. Like help them with their first email template, sending emails, create journeys, so for journeys, you had to actually work, understand the use case, help them whiteboard their idea, and then create it. So I did a lot of them for their Australian clients as well as Indian clients here. And I think marketing was learning on the job for me. I knew the app because I used to help my end users back in US. But I was not very functional about it. As I worked with them, I think I understood marketing, what all can be done, end of it came out of it marketing Pardot as well as Marketing Cloud certification. So that’s always been my journey. I have gone and understood the domain technology and then ensure that I got certified. So it’s a full circle with whatever I was doing.
Ben (13:38.962)
And has Pardot been a consistent in your career? Like, has that been something you’ve kind of continued to work with over the years?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (13:47.533)
I actually turned from Pardot to Marketing Cloud now. So when I was with Arxxus, I worked a lot in Pardot. But now Pardot is not used. It’s used for account manage. In fact, they’ve also named it as Account Management. I think I’m not very sure. Salesforce keep changing the name. But more of Pardot has started reducing over the years, and Marketing Cloud has picked up also because now marketing also has become such complex solutions that is being built. Marketing Cloud has that ability to do everything, using customisation and code and things like that. Also, the experience that Marketing Cloud gives with all the integrations now is better than Pardot. Now, it’s Marketing Cloud and not Pardot.
Ben (14:41.942)
So you’ve mentioned, obviously you were in the UK, you were in the US and you’ve spent a number of months as well in Australia and then obviously you’ve returned to India each time and how do you describe the differences between being like an onshore, like the experience of being an onshore consultant compared to working as an offshore consultant? What are the major differences for both you as the person but also how you’re engaged by the customer?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (15:11.742)
Anytime if you are onshore, being onshore client facing is a better experience because you are talking directly with them and engaging with them and as I said, can also lead to better solution. Many times what happens at offshore is you get a filtered version of what an onshore consultant or Architect thinks and then you solution based on that. In Arxxus I was lucky enough to be able to even do workshops and conversations with client directly. So it was even when I was at offshore, I was always client facing. But many of the offshore roles is mainly on, you know, onshore facing would put a financial requirement and then you start working on them. Sometimes you actually do not understand, I mean, not it’s not common, but sometimes you do not understand the actual problem you are solving what the onshore person has perceived. Not that they’re wrong but if you are there I think you understand more. So to be very frank, I love that onshore or the client facing part of it. Initial years, in India, there was limited opportunities. Now India also has started accepting Salesforce as a CRM. Arundhati Bhattacharya is the current CEO of Salesforce, made it big in the finance industry, as well as Hyperforce helped because India was also reluctant about data being shared. So now there’s a lot of client-facing opportunities in India for India business. And that’s why you can see the CTAs are also coming back in India because we are also ready to lead from front. But apart from that, I think what I always find is the work-life balance. So when you are in, say, UK or US, sorry, UK and Australia, US not that much. Australia you have very nice work-life balance like you will shut down at after 5 p.m. and even the people are very considerate, like whenever I work my clients, my co-workers were very considerate that “okay you know this is your personal time we should not disturb you” but in India you end up having work you know long working hours. If you’re working with a client they expect you to be available whenever they want you to be. Then it is very difficult to draw the line. You have to have that hard conversation to draw the line. So yeah, that’s a major difference. US, sometimes I feel they also work very hard, per se, beyond work hours and things like that. But I love UK and Australia in terms of work culture.
Ben (18:11.27)
Yeah, yeah, I think definitely. I mean, I can speak for both as well. I’m from the UK originally. I’ve been living in Australia for 13 years, but I think Australia has it perfect in terms of the, I mean, there are obviously certain situations where people will work longer hours, but generally the work-life balance here is great. So you mentioned as well around like, you know, CTAs now in India and that’s definitely been interesting to see. And it’s interesting to see how you explain that because like we had Poonam on the show as well in the past. And, you know, what we historically saw as offshore roles were developer consultants, the, you know, the requirements would be gathered offshore, the design would be done onshore, and then the brief would be sent offshore for build, come back, the demos would be done onshore. And that’s definitely changing now, right? And yourself and put in a number of examples of, some of the more senior, some of the more client engagement, client facing work can be done anywhere in the world now. And do you think that’s been driven by things like COVID as well where people couldn’t travel? Or do you think, as you mentioned, is it more the work that’s happening in India on Salesforce rather than it being, you know, the customer facing roles are also being done from India, but to Australian clients?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (19:49.866)
I think it’s mixed. India always have a great mind. So over a period of time, we have been able to pick up those roles. But COVID definitely helped a lot because work anywhere culture basically told leadership or many times because it was so competitive. Like in pre-sales, I know how the whole thing changed from onshore, offshore. We had to be more offshore to make it more competitive. When that happened a few roles that could have easily come off-shore was TechArc. Business application analyst and had to still be onshore, functional people still had to be onshore because they had to be talking with the client getting the requirements, but what we used to do was have one TechArc onshore and one TechArc off-shore. So for client engagements, road mapping you had a senior TechArc but actual designing of the solution was started being done offshore and in fact there are so much deliveries right now we are doing 100% offshore. So because even clients across the world are understanding that we are paying more just for having one individual onshore. In fact I was in a client meeting and we were discussing price, and he looked at one line and he said “oh there is no one worth 1 million”. Because that architect over the whole financial year was one year on his bill. So I think that is also a realisation which is happening. So whatever roles that can be moved and with I think the designer certification and everything helped because everyone got certified, everyone was ready to pick up the roles. So the roles were coming in, there was a whole group of people who are ready to pick up the roles and deliver high quality. Because if it would have come and the quality wasn’t delivered, it wouldn’t have stayed. So yeah, and that kind of, I think even a CTA thing, it was never a thought, you know, that we will create CTAs at offshore. But yeah, now, they actually Accenture invested, they invested on four CTA, you know, four people, send them to FlowRepublic for coaching and the exam, as you know, CTA is not cheap. Thankfully all of us have crossed the line.
Ben (22:34.618)
Yeah for sure and you mentioned pre-sales there so now we’ll talk about pre-sales and your experience what that means for you and the journey you’ve been on to CTA and coming from the pre-sales background but when did you first get exposed to pre-sales?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (22:52.058)
It was Arxxus, so as I was aligned to non-for-profit, part-out and manufacturing domain. So I did the RFPs for it, go-to-market strategy, everything, I worked very closely with my manager on that. And somewhere that was the switch. I loved how fast-paced learning, it happens in pre-sales. I’m generally a knowledge junkie. So I think it was the best place to learn. What I found was if you’re on a project, you’re there for six months plus one year and you learn only the things that are in the project but pre-sales you are doing you know RFP every two to like here it’s more fast-paced but you are at least doing every two to three weeks and every RFP is a different, at Accenture it is a different domain technology so I have to you know be on it so when I joined Accenture actually my aim was to learn enterprise. Arxxus being a boutique firm, didn’t have huge projects, right. So and with that theme, I actually took sales solution architecture over technical architecture when I joined and it helped because in my first six months I solutioned a first Education Cloud, first Health Cloud and I won those deals and pre-sales generally are always ahead of the curve. So they are the first two, and to delivery you have to always understand right so learn Vlocity which is called Industry Cloud now and they have delivered Health, Media Cloud, Utilities, Public Sector, Education, Non-for-profit, everything on Industry Cloud now so as well as being Enterprise Architect and for multi clouds Salesforce integrations with Workday, Oracle, SAP, so I mean, within two, three years to be able to do everything, that will not happen in delivery. So it is difficult because you have to be fast-paced, but I love it.
Ben (25:00.158)
So for anyone listening that doesn’t really understand that pre-sales role, obviously you’ve kind of given some insight into like every two to three weeks, you’re working on a different RFP, but what goes into that RFP? So obviously you’re needing to understand the use case, the requirements, what do you do differently to what a Delivery Architect would do once the project is won?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (25:23.96)
So generally, there are two kinds of RFPs. There’s one RFP which has detail requirement. So you can go through it, solution it. Solution in a sense, you would decide which all clouds would be needed. You would put a whole together solution, blueprint saying, “OK, to solve this issue, I would need a Sales Cloud, Service Cloud. I will go with XYZ AppExchange. This would be the integrations needed, this much data migration”. And then you would have to estimate for it, and staff it. I mean half of the pre-sales role is technology associated and half is you know, Excel sheets where you’re staffing it, pricing it. Stakeholder management also becomes a main part of it, at least in Accenture we have a very stringent review process, we are actually working with the Managing Director, telling them why they should do this, right. And those, you are actually having that viewpoint what they have and it is also a very fast learning experience to grow as a leader, right. And then the second part of the, some type of proposals are where they say, you know, you are already a big SI partner. Tell us how we solve the issue. So they would not even give a business requirement or high level requirements. So in those we have to actually research the industry, understand what the common use cases are, define a MVP for them like “okay let us get started with this” and define an overall roadmap for 2-3 years. Many times you do get SMEs at least functional SMEs who will help you document those use cases, but you would have to anyways design it with Salesforce, right? Like what can you use, which clouds can you use, which features you can use, and then estimated staff it, price it. With the proposal, some organisation you would also be creating the proposal. In Accenture, we have a separate team. So our role is very much detailed as a pre-sales Architect. But that’s your day to day. As I said, it’s two to three days, weeks and with that you get to understand the domain, understand a new cloud like for example when Media Cloud came in, when Utilities Cloud came in, no one knew it. So you had to, you are the first person who had to research, there is no even training, you would go to the Salesforce content and see how the fit gap analysis actually happened and then you include customisation of whatever does not fit out of the box. And while doing that you have to ensure it is a deliverable solution as well as a winnable solution, so you have to put a delivery hat as well as a sales hat. So yeah, it’s fast pace compared to delivery and yeah, not every, we say generally pre-sales is not for everyone. But yeah, it’s my adrenaline and I think I love it. So yeah.
Ben (28:32.214)
So would you build like a proof of concepts as well as part of your role?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (28:36.535)
Yes, for some customers, we create proof of concept. We have a different team within Accenture. We call it the Innovation team, which helps us with the POC creation. We would demo as well. There are many times, while an RFP comes, and you see that is something that is going to come more. Like in US child welfare, like the policy changed and I think that happened once in Australia also when I was working there. The policy changes and you know that each state is going to now create an RFP. So it’s a good time to also go back to leadership and say, you know, it’s the time to create an asset, which will help you pace up the development, as well as by showing the asset, it’s easier to win the deals as well. As a pre-sales Architect you would give an input. At Accenture I was not involved in creating POC but Arxxus being a boutique firm, you know, you have your hands everywhere so you would also create a POC.
Ben (29:56.306)
Yeah, makes sense. So to me, that sounds like the kind of perfect role for going for the CTA, right? Because you’re seeing lots of different requirements regularly, you’re having to solution quickly. You know, you’re having to get across all of the new and old technology within the Salesforce world. So when you decided to go for the CTA, you’re being from that pre sales background, what were the benefits and what were the negatives, I guess, for you going for the CTA with the knowledge you had as a pre-sales Architect.
Sandhya Mangrulkar (30:27.922)
I think very rightly said and you won’t, I mean the common conversation around the CTA community is the name is Certified Technical Architect but it has lot of things which is solution associated, right. So being a Solution Architect or anyone coming from pre-sales it definitely helps. You know, I actually had one of the CTA candidates who failed the Review Board and I asked him, you know, “what went wrong according to you?” And he said, “I went in the domain that came through, I didn’t even know”. Because you have three hours to solve and if you don’t know the domain, understanding the ask and designing itself becomes a challenge. So positive, obviously. I had the breadth, I knew domains, I knew lot of clouds. So what could be done in Salesforce? So we in CTA, you usually use Sales, Service experience, you do not use industry clouds, but at least you know how the problem was solved. So that helps as the fast paid solution like in three hours putting a solution out there, that didn’t scare me. So that was a benefit. In Arxxus, yes, I had the depth, but in Accenture, since I was only doing pre-sales and Salesforce was growing so fast, there were so many things that I did not know. So the depth I lacked, which I had to pick up in the journey.
Ben (32:14.622)
And how did you go about that, I guess? How do you go deeper into certain areas? How do you identify the areas that you need to go deeper into?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (32:24.538)
So I think FlowRepublic actually helped there. So Seb has put a big Excel, a scary mind map, which is for the FITGAP analysis. And on the day one, you hit the ground reality in a sense of what all you need to be expert on to sit the Review Board. Then we had a cohort, a group of six who, and let me just put it out there, to become a CTA you need to have a good study buddy because it’s a long journey and you just cannot walk alone. So thankfully I had a nice cohort but all of them were Technical Architects. So when they were talking most of the times I used to get lost because I had not even heard a few words, I used to just quickly take the note, go back to Salesforce, and eventually what we did was we distributed the topics. So I took all the clouds. I’m also a PM, so project governance, everything I’m comfortable with. So I took all those and they taught me OAuths, integration patterns, Copado and everything. So we taught each other. And so end of the CTA journey, like at least I say that it’s not knowledge that you gain, you gain relationships, friends, mentors, a group of people who you can work with in future as you grow as a CTA. So I think I made long lasting friends as a part of this journey. Because you were like learning together, struggling together. So yeah, that kind of helped filling all those gaps that I had.
Ben (34:15.158)
That’s a recurring theme I think like so many people talk about their study groups whether they’re from FlowRepublic or ones that are out in the, you know they find people themselves, it seems that definitely is the way to go. Now you mentioned earlier your partner was in Salesforce before you. So obviously I guess they understand the CTA as well and not everyone has that, I guess, in terms of having an understanding partner that would understand why it’s important, also the level of commitment required. But how did that journey work for you in terms of the level of input that it was going to take? Did you know that from the outset? Like, was there more than you were expecting? And how was that for the family as well, I guess?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (35:04.154)
I think I have been hearing a lot of interviews and all the success LinkedIn updates, right? And the common theme was you need to take a lot of time sort of your family, friends. And somehow personally that is something I didn’t want to do. Like as a mum, I didn’t want to take time off my kid. What I did obviously was outsource what I could, you know, cooking, cleaning, laundry. So in India that helps, we have our village to take care of house as well as kids. So that is something I started. I used to get up early morning, do my scenario, then work. So eventually it started impacting my health. And I also tried to change my sleep pattern because Review Board is usually end of the, like it starts at 4.30, 5.30 our time and goes to 11.30, 12. So it actually completely spoiled my sleep and I was sleeping very late hours. And I think that’s the time my husband used to not wake me up in the morning sometimes. My kid used to go to school and I used to not know. So that’s the kind of commitment, I think, for my husband. And I was shocked my kid wasn’t waking me up because he needed his mama. But he understood that mama was sleeping late and it’s OK, she’ll be there when I’m back. And I used to be amazed. I used to get up and the house is empty. And they were like, “no, you slept late”. So yes, that helped because he understood what it takes to be a CTA. What I feel is I scared him because he could be in a CTA journey as well. But I am the nerd of the family and seeing me struggle so much with hours and my health as well. I think he is now not sure whether he wants to be in that journey kind of thing.
Ben (37:17.574)
And when you mention your health, obviously that’s, you know, nothing’s more important than your health. So was there any journey, any time through the journey when you questioned whether or not it was worth continuing?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (37:30.47)
So throughout my journey, actually I started with a third degree ligament tear. So which kind of kept me immobile for six months. So that had impacted my immunity. Over that I had chikungunya which is again leads to bones and limbs pain. And then the COVID somehow was a last straw because I was already having so much health issues. So when COVID hit me, I took it bit badly. And then I had other issues, bronchitis, sinus. So overall because of the work hours, I mean my work as well as CTA and generally the stress that you add on was affecting my immunity. So I also actually took a time off in terms of at least for a few months I was part time so that I could actually get back some health, you have you know work life balance, I wanted to just concentrate on life more rather than you know just running around, but yeah it’s pretty hard and to be very frank, everyone I know who was on the journey had something going on. For me it was my health, someone had you know ailing parents, someone had kids and things like that, so it is your persistence and resilience that takes you through. No wonder there’s just less than 400 CTAs in the world. It’s not that there are not many Technical Architects, that the journey itself is, I mean, it’s not a two or three month journey. People sometimes fail and yeah, so have to just keep going, going. You have to concentrate on the journey rather than the result or it just gets very, very tiring.
Ben (39:28.454)
Yeah, and how important was it for you, for your family to be on that journey, like to understand, like for your child? Was it like, because did you differentiate between work and CTA? Like did they know, “I can’t go in that room because mum’s on a video call with work or I can’t go in that room because mum’s studying”? Like did there need to be a differentiation or was it just all blurred into one and you came across as a workaholic?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (39:57.826)
For sure I came out as a workaholic. My kid when I started was four and a half, five, so it was very difficult to explain to him. But somehow he understood, I think, the way I was, you know, mocks are very typical generally or the conversations you have at work. I do not have a closed room policy for my kid. So he just came in one day and he asked me, “mama, is it work or Salesforce”? And I’m like, “what do you mean?” He’s like, “Salesforce, what you’re doing, your exam, or is it, you know, your work”. So without telling itself, he understood his mama was working on two different projects. And over the period of time, he, I think he was praying the most that I pass and he gets his mama back. So though I tried my best not to cut his hours, but it’s difficult, right? Many times you have your mock so late so there are times and I couldn’t take him to bed and he would just, again, he would walk into me and I have done mocks where like I’m sleeping, you know, he’s there on me and I’m still talking and I’m making him sleep. So that wasn’t something which he wanted obviously. So when I got my result, he was the person who was dancing the most.
Ben (41:26.539)
Yeah I was going to say, next question was how did it feel to pass and to share that with you know, your loved ones and for people that had seen the toll it had taken on your health and things like that, to actually get the outcome at the end, what was that feeling like?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (41:39.134)
So my first reaction was a relief. The sense of achievement actually started coming when the wishes started pouring in. Then it was a bit, I mean, I knew it was a big deal. But when you actually start hearing from people, you start realising. And it gets overwhelming. I had a lot of ladies write to me that it is inspirational to see you do all, work, CTA, and I’m big on Instagram and reels actually, so whatever I do I actually put it out there like a cute reel, so they know I also enjoy life so they were like how do you do this, and even in my work, I was not very loud about that I’m in a CTA journey, so when I became CTA I went into meetings and people like “how did you do between so many deals?” So yeah at that point it was like, “oh yes, I did something big” and it was humbling, overwhelming, you know, but ultimately I’m actually glad I didn’t fail because somewhere I used to always feel how would I motivate my kid in the future, right, to not give up and things like that. And not many people say this, but CTA, however much of a technical you are, it actually boils down to that day, you know, how, what scenario you get. Many times even the judge. It so much depends on your mental and physical health, you know, and people’s, I mean, people are capable, it’s just that they are not able to convert it. Your luck plays a very good role. So I was just relieved that I just crossed the line.
Ben (43:27.713)
So if you look at start to finish, how different are you now after the journey? And obviously the result is great, but I know the journey means so much to people and obviously you’ve made friends and things like that, which is also awesome, but as an Architect, how much more well-rounded are you now having gone through that journey?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (43:50.446)
A lot, I mean from where I started, I was a non-for-profit consultant or Pardot consultant. From there to being a CTA, I have learned a lot. I think I can go into any meeting not worried about what would be thrown at me. So as an individual, as an Architect, as a professional, I think it is great. I always tell people, “it’s OK if you don’t want to become a CTA. But do take the journey”, because you learn so much in the CTA journey just those initial prerequisite Architect and CTA obviously it’s an all-around development. It’s not just technical, it’s also communication, it’s also storytelling. It’s also how you manage the stress because you have 45 minutes of presentation and 45 minutes of Q&A. So in that, they try to change the scenario and you have to be giving a solution on the top, so it actually grooms you overall. Having said that, I feel CTA is a superpower, right? And with a great power comes great responsibility. Because now people take you for the word of it. And if you say wrong, it is out there. It’s like, “oh, that CTA said, it must be right”. So that is the responsibility you carry. And you have to be always on the top of the game in terms of knowledge. You should know what you’re saying. So yes, the role is also very scary in terms of now, I know I need to be always right.
Ben (45:35.75)
Yeah. And having now gone deeper, obviously that was the area that you needed to go deeper to pass, because you were quite broad in what you were doing. Has that enticed you to want to go into delivery more, or are you still getting everything you need from the world of pre-sales?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (45:53.614)
I think I just had a conversation with my lead where I was like, “I’d like to mix it now with pre-sales, as I enjoy, so I would not leave it”. But I would like to mix it with technology consulting, delivery in a sense on a high level discovery, designing the solution, reviewing the solution. So yes, I think the next steps would be to have an all-around role with pre-sale consulting and delivery. I’m just digesting but yeah, I think that would be where the next steps lie.
Ben (46:29.502)
Yeah, nice, nice. Well, I’m excited to see what does come next. And yeah, really, really great to hear about your journey. And hopefully, our listeners are inspired and, and yeah, take on board some of your excellent advice and, and guidance through what you learned through the journey to CTA and your early career. So if anyone is listening and wants to reach out and ask any questions, where’s the best place to find you?
Sandhya Mangrulkar (46:52.554)
LinkedIn. I’m very much active on LinkedIn
Ben (46:57.762)
Brilliant, well thank you so much, absolute pleasure to have you on the show.
Sandhya Mangrulkar (47:01.214)
Thank you. It was a great, great experience talking to you
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