Anand Rego

Guest speaker

Open Universities Australia gets educated… in Agile WoW!

An education business getting itself educated. A bit ironic, right?

If you’ve worked in a Contact Centre, or know someone who does, you’d know the daily struggles they face. Staff with stiff targets, trying to get a `sale at any cost’, often ignoring the real needs of their customers.

Yes. Well-defined procedures, good Knowledge Management, Telephony and Customer Relationship Management systems may exist. Yet, the `traditional’ approaches often create ‘micromanaged’ environments of frustrated leaders and staff. Most teams yearn for a better work culture, that could make it easier for them to provide a better Customer Xperience!

In this engaging and thought-provoking presentation, Anand and David tell the story of the journey of the Student Advisory team at Open Universities Australia (OUA). They share how the team successfully transformed its culture by embedding an Agile mindset, which led to:

• Continuous learning, unlearning, and adapting v/s traditional approaches.
• Simplified sub-systems across recruitment, remuneration, IT projects, etc.
• Highly empowered leadership, team engagement and collaboration.
• Improved Customer Experience, Employee Experience and Financial Results, turning around a 5-year decline into 3+ years of new student growth.

They had many challenges along the way (and still have a few!). But, the team has found a better WoW (Way of Working) and continues to raise the bar in their ongoing journey. As Anand shares his leadership vision and David shares his 360-degree experience of starting out as a Student Advisor, became a Team Leader and now is an amazing Agile Coach, we hope you’ll gain a few good ideas to help you in your own journey.

Anand is a consultant, coach, facilitator, and business leader.

He has successfully led transformation and revenue turnaround initiatives in Online Education, Banking and Consulting in Australia, Asia Pacific, India, and the Middle East. He has diverse experience across Sales & Service, Human Resources, Technology, Coaching and Consulting.
Currently, Anand runs his consulting practice, The Rainbow Butterfly Foundation, and delivers executive coaching, leadership development and program management services for his clients, based on Agile/Lean principles.

In his most recent leadership role, Anand was the Head of Sales and Student Advisory at Open Universities Australia (OUA). Anand led a contact centre sales team of student advisors driving ‘`service-lead-sales’. He embedded a new culture that fostered collaboration among cross-functional teams, significantly improved the People and Customer Experience, and turned the business around to growth.

Anand’s prior leadership roles were with ANZ Bank (Melbourne/India), Oracle Financial Services (India/Singapore) and Standard Chartered Bank (India).

Anand is excited about being a transformation evangelist, enabling leaders, teams, and organisations, to find ‘`better ways of doing things’ by constantly unlearning and relearning, and building trust and accountability to help them deliver outstanding results.