Jul 13, 2014

An average career sees the individual transition across multiple industries or verticals as they are known these days. While the functional role of the individual continues to be the same — sales, marketing, engineering, supply chain, finance; the adaptability of the individual to the nuances of the new vertical is a key success factor in making a successful transition. Companies are hesitant to hire people from a different industry to their’s because of this transitional challenge.

Here are 5 ways to adapt to a job in a new industry/vertical -

Understand the Value Chain. the standard definition of the value chain is the series of activities, that companies in an industry perform to deliver a valuable service to their target market. Every industry value chain has inputs (supply side), processing and output (demand side). For instance telecom as inputs (infrastructure, vendors, people), processing (communication service providers who use the inputs) and output (services given to subscribers). Understanding the value chain gives you a broad perspective of the industry.

Understand where your Company fits in: Once you understand the value chain, you need to understand where your employer fits in. A lot of companies position themselves as working on core processes in an industry, while in reality they may be impacting a small bit of it. For instance, a company that positions itself as enabling commodity trade could actually be an IT company that provides a platform and application for trading. As an employee it is important to understand that nuance.

Understand the Flow of Money: If you are to make any positive impact on your company, you need to understand the flow of money from the demand side to the supply side. In telecom, how does prepaid work, how does postpaid work, how do data services work, how do inter-operator tariffs work, how does termination work and in all this how does $100 get distributed, to who and at what margin. If you get this, then you will know how your company makes money

Understand Competitive Positioning: No one exists in isolation and every company loves to ‘drink the kool aid’ with respect to its position in the market. It is important for you to invest time and understand how your company stacks up against competition. This will give you perspective in important discussions and decisions. If you can spend time talking to customers to understand this, nothing like it

Understand the Lingo: Finally, every industry has its own lingo and having worked in IT and Telecom, I can attest to have been bombarded with over a thousand of them. Learn the key abbreviations, slangs and the logic behind them to make sense of what your colleagues are talking about. And when they see you saying the same things, you will earn their respect faster

Changing industries is as exciting experience an experience as it is challenging. I would recommend it to anyone to broaden their perspective on business and life.