Posted by Barney Beal, Content Director, NetSuite
Proud to be with NetSuite: Ash Thapar (3rd from left) with his team
From customer to sales person to project manager across multiple countries, Ash Thapar, director of professional services for Asia Pacific-Japan, is intimately familiar with NetSuite.
In fact, just as most of the world was preparing itself for the Y2K Armageddon and the system overhaul that entailed, Thapar was sitting down with a representative of the local tax office in his home office in Southampton, England going over the taxes of the semi-conductor trading company he was running. As the tax official spotted the Excel spreadsheets and cardboard boxes full of receipts, she quickly kicked off her shoes and made herself comfortable, knowing she was in for a long afternoon, Thapar said. She also suggested Thapar invest in a more advanced accounting system.
That led to a free trial of the Oracle Small Business System (NetSuite’s early moniker), which ultimately led to a paid version and a lengthy and rewarding career.
Over the next seven years, Thapar ran his business on NetSuite and it thrived. So he eagerly became a reference customer. When the Asian financial crisis hit in 2004, he moved to Singapore in an effort to lower costs and also became a NetSuite reseller.
While there, Thapar spoke at a prospect event and was ultimately offered a job at NetSuite in the Singapore office as a member of the sales team, tasked with the significant challenge of convincing businesses in Singapore of the transformational value of the cloud.
“This was assuming I could actually get past convincing them I was working for a company called ‘NetSuite’ and wasn’t trying to set up an appointment for ‘next week’,” he said.
He eventually got moved to the role of project manager, and found himself on his first ERP implementation in Cyprus. Yet, instead of an easy implementation and time by the beach, Thapar found himself working with a very difficult customer with complex business needs, working late nights and locking up the office when he left. And he loved it.
He went on to work on projects in Vietnam and China and ultimately followed his boss to Australia in 2010 to work as a practice manager. Being part of an office that’s grown from 50 employees to 100 and a company that now counts nearly 24,000 customers, Thapar has relished working with incredible people across the globe.
“NetSuite is a fast, exciting place to work in, with incredible innovation in the product and constant innovation in the way we do business,” he said. “We’re always changing and finding better ways to do things, whether for our customers or for our own employees. And I still love having the opportunity to travel across the region and work with businesses that are transforming themselves. I love the fact that there is still so much more to do, new markets to get into, new employees to mentor, new products to launch and learn.”
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Read why NetSuite was named in the BRW Best Places to Work 2014 Study in Australia.