Name: Harsh Dayama

NRIC: G0739227W

Company: Zebra Technologies Asia Pacific Pte Ltd Address: 120 Robinson Road, Parakou Building #06-01, Singapore 068913 Period of Attachment: 17 May 2010 7 August 2010 Designation: Channel Support Executive Objective: To be exposed to the marketing and distribution channel of the company

Organisation
Zebra Technologies Corporation provides the broadest range of innovative technology solutions to identify, track, and manage the deployment of critical assets fo r improved business efficiency. Zebras core technologies include reliable on-demand printer and state-of-the-art software and hardware solutions. By enabling improvements in sourcing, visibility, security and accuracy, Zebra helps its customers to put the right asset in the right place at the right time. Zebra serves more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies worldwide. As of December 31, 2008, management estimates that Zebra has sold more than 7,500,000 printers to customers around the world. Zebra Technologies Asia Pacific Private Limited, located in Singapore, is the regional head-quarter for the AsiaPacific region. The staff here handles all operations related to sales and distribution of Zebra products in the Asia Pacific, as well as provides training to new technical staff from other offices in the APAC zone.

Work Responsibilities
Zebra gave me the opportunity to be exposed to the distribution channel of Zebra products in the APAC region. I was reporting directly to Ms. Joyce Tan, who was the Channel Manager at Zebra. Throughout the term of the internship, Joyce had to be away in snatches to different countries as she was organizing seminars and attending the different events relevant to the industry that took place in different cities throughout Asia Pacific. This was made clear to me during my interview itself as the HR Manager had informed me they wanted someone who would be able to work independently and not rely too much on step by step guidance. Therefore, I knew exactly what was expected from me and had to difficulties understanding how I had to work. In the beginning, for the first two weeks, Joyce was on a tour of many South East Asian countries, organizing seminars, and she needed logistics help from me, to make sure all the marketing materials reached the destination cities in time, before the events. As mentioned above, the company manufactures and sells different kinds of printers like barcode printers, receipt printers, PVC card printers, etc. and there are different models for each of these types of printers. There are different brochures of each printer model stacked in cupboards in the marketing storage area. Whenever Zebra had an event, the practice was to assemble all the brochures of the relevant models into a Zebra paper folder, and hand out such folders to prospective clients for them to take a look at all the different models on offer. Thus, my job right before an event was to assemble the brochures that Joyce would choose, take one brochure of each model as told by Joyce, and put them into a Zebra folder, and continue this cycle until the required number of folders had been made. Normally, a single event needed around 50-100 folders depending on the size of the event. The work seemed quite clerical and repetitive at first, but then I realized that not all aspects of work are so-called fun anyway, and there is a lot of background work that goes into the success of a seminar, though we fail to notice that in all the glitz and glamour. This was essential work for the seminar as only by handing out such folders could be sure that the prospective clients would not just forget Zebra as they walked out the door. Through the comprehensive brochures in the folder, theyd be able to remember what Zebra has on offer and what the technical specification of each model are. Soon after Joyce returned from the seminars, she asked the people from the technical department to teach me how to use three of the printers in our office, used for printing cards and wrist bands respectively. The P120i was to print regular quality PVC cards, the 330i for printing high quality PVC cards, and the HC100 for printing wrist bands. I was supposed to print sample cards and wrist bands using the three printers. Using the sample cards and wrist bands

I printed, I was required to create catalogues containing the brochures of printers, the sample cards from each type of printer, the wrist bands, and some other pre-printed sample cards from other printer models. This again was to help our prospective clients feel the quality of our printers first hand during seminars. During seminars, we would also bring a printer along so as to print cards on the spot as samples. There was one big conference (NEPCON 2010) that Zebra was organizing in India during May, and Joyce, my supervisor, was in charge of the event. So I assisted her with the administrative work for the event. She had previously sent out invites to all the partners and distributors in India to attend the event which was going to be held in Goa, so she needed help in collating all the replies and making sure we received all the application forms duly filled before the due date. She sent all the emails she had received thus far from the partners to me, so that I could check who was attending and if the forms were complete. I helped her create an Excel database of all the attendees and their personal information and preferences from the forms, and if I found mistakes in the forms, I sent them back to the partners for correction and/or clarification. After all the attendees had been finalized, I had to design and print ID cards for all the partners attending, complete with their name, their company represented, and the logo of Zebra as well as the event name. I had to use specific software used for designing cards and it was a novel experience for me, as I had to design the card from scratch! Joyce and Sherolynn (the Marketing Manager) accepted my designs in one go, and then I printed cards for all the attendees to be sent back to Goa. After all the marketing collaterals were ready, Joyce had someone teach me how to send out couriers using DHL and Fed Ex from our companys account. We already had big cartons to put the materials in, so I packed everything inside cartons, sealed them, and then called the DHL pick-up service to send the cartons off to India, where they were received at the hotel where the conference was to be held. While Joyce was away in India, she asked me to check the companys database of the partners and distributors and their statuses. The status of each partner denotes whether it is an Authorized Reseller, Premium Partner or an Advanced Partner. Thus, I had to tally the companys database with the actual status of the database, reconcile whether all the partners had access to Zebras partner portal, and update the statuses of each partner according to the latest information provided to me by the company. After the successful India event, Joyce had to tour other South East Asian countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. for work, so in the meantime, she told me to find out information about hotels. Zebra was planning two events in December, and had shortlisted cities like Da Nang, Cebu, Gold Coast, Jeju, Hokkaido, etc. My job was to find the three best hotels in each city and email a request for proposal to them, to enquire what would be the charges on some approximate dates in December, for the estimated number of people. This turned out to be quite tricky as many times, the best of hotels didnt have an email address on their website, so I had to call them up to get their email address and then mail to them. Even with that, it was quite troublesome to keep track of all the emails that I received. Also, I kept getting calls from the different hotels, so coordinating with them just got more and more difficult. For Zebra, it was just a request for information to find out how different cities compared in terms of cost, but the hotels were trying to push their case quite hard and thus, they kept on mailing me, contacting me, asking for any further developments to the event. It was very tough explaining to them every time that there hadn t been a decision made yet, and Id let them know, but I kept on getting mails and calls anyway. Finally, after I had all the proposals from the hotels in different cities, I collated the data and forwarded them to the Marketing Manager, who then asked me to find out what the air fares would be like, from all the cities where we had partners to the cities where we were tentatively thinking of holding our event. Besides this, Joyce asked me to research for hotels for another event, which was to be held in Port Dickson, Malaysia. I enquired for hotels there, and then a lady from one of the hotels was visiting Singapore, so she asked for a meeting with me and my supervisor. Joyce was very supportive of me and wanted me to learn, so she had me sit with her through the negotiation and to help her out. This was my first experience of actually real life negotiation, and it was a great learning experience! I was very happy that I could contribute to the negotiation process by helping out Joyce whenever she needed some information, but the very fact of sitting with the both of them, seeing how two experienced people negotiate with each other was very enlightening!

The last month of my internship was when Joyce was here in Singapore all the time, so I got to learn a lot more from her during that time. She taught me how the distribution channel works, how Zebra s distribution is like, and why we need to have the kind of distribution channel we have, instead of selling it directly to consumers. My final project of the month was to analyse the competition Zebra has in the Asia Pacific region and prepare a comprehensive database of what competitors exist in which country, and are competing with us in the provision of which specific solutions. I learnt a lot by doing this research as till then, my knowledge of the RFID industry was limited to Zebra, but after doing the research, I realized there are so many other companies that Zebra is competing against. Companies like Sato, Datamax, Intermec, etc. are solid competitors in their own regard, so fending off such tough competition takes a lot of planning and dedication on Zebra s part. After about 4 weeks of comprehensive research, I managed to finish the database and sent it over to Joyce, who appreciated my efforts. For the last week of my internship, Joyce was away on work, so I had to work independently and finish up all the pending work, besides making a database of all the hotels that I had got replies from, so she could use the info later when she needed it. Finally, there was a new intern coming in to replace me, so I did my best to acquaint him with all my work and provide him with as much assistance I could to help him acclimatize to the working environment at Zebra. On my last day, I bade good bye to all my seniors and colleagues, and that was the end of my internship attachment.

Accomplishments
One of my biggest accomplishments achieved, besides learning a lot of things, of course, is to have been able to apply what I had learned in school and at SMU. There is no dearth of SMU students who complain that their internship attachment wasnt ideal and that they didnt learn much and couldnt apply whatever they had learned, so I feel quite satisfied that I was able to do both. I specifically remember having assisted Joyce in creating Macros for an Excel workbook and explaining to her a lot other Excel functions which she was unaware of. Besides that, when I was sitting in with Joyce in her meetings and watching her negotiate with her counterparts, my mind was always thinking about the negotiation strategies I had learned and how Joyce and other people were using those very strategies subconsciously! I also got a great insight into the RFID and barcode printing industries. How many times have we tapped our matriculation cards at the school gantries every day, without ever wondering how are these cards printed! I am lucky to have not only learned of this industry, but also to have had first-hand experience in using the printers, designing cards and learning the technical know-how. Finally, now I am very well-versed with how a seminar is organized, starting from the very planning right to the execution. I had been kept involved right from when Joyce and the others would come up with the idea for a seminar, then the research for hotels and airfares, finalizing the attendees, executing the event, etc. Even with hotels, there was so much to learn. I had never known that seminars have their own packages, and you have to be very clear in what you expect of the hotel. Whether it is going to be a half-day or a full-day seminar, one or two lunch tea breaks, break out rooms, there are just so many technicalities to a seminar that I would have never known otherwise!

Reflections
During the stint of my internship, I believe I have grown in maturity. This internship was an eye opener for me as this was my first office job. The perception of office job that I had in mind before was changed during this period. Initially, I would think that office job is mundane with piles of work to be done daily. However, observing how the employees in the company work and interact with one another changed my perception. The professionalism that the employees portray inspired me to have similar working attitude. I feel that everyone works well together and surprisingly there was little office politics. Every day, there are always new work responsibilities which make work more interesting. Even though all the staff was ethnically Singaporean Chinese, I never once felt as if I was being treated any differently from anyone else in the company. Even though I was an intern, all the seniors respected me and helped me have a meaningful stay in the company. My interpersonal skills improved and I feel that I worked well with the employees. This is only going to be helpful for me in the future and I am really thankful to Zebra for it.

Future Endeavors

I am currently pursuing a degree in the Bachelor of Business Management course with Marketing as my first major and Corporate Communications as my second. I would want to be more exposed to the Marketing side of a company. Over the next summer, I hope to secure an internship with a marketing firm. Understanding how marketing firms go about creating brand value is something that interests me tremendously, so it would be a nice segway to my career, which lies in marketing. My family has a small business in Singapore, and I help out my uncle and dad as much as I can during my free time. So, Im learning about international trade and this is an area which, besides being highly lucrative in terms of money, is highly interesting and is very well suited for an extrovert like me. I am still at an indecision as to what I am going to do after graduation as there is a possibility of me both working in a big company, or just helping my family expand our business. The future holds uncertainty and I hope to be pleasantly surprised as I continue on with my life journey.