Employee Spotlight: Le Thi Thao Ly - SYSCOM GLOBAL SOLUTIONS

FEATURED EMPLOYEE

Keep It Simple, SYSCOM: Le Thi Thao Ly’s Direct and Effective Approach

Role:	Senior Functional Consultant
Division:	Global Business Solution
Location:	Tokyo, Japan
Expertise:	Microsoft Dynamics 365 FO
Experience:	5 years at SYSCOM
Hobbies:	Travel, Reading novels to relax

Role

Senior Functional Consultant

Division:

Global Business Solution

Location:

Tokyo, Japan

Expertise:

Microsoft Dynamics 365 FO

Experience:

5 years at SYSCOM

Hobbies:

Travel, Reading novels to relax

Le Thi Thao Ly, a Senior Functional Consultant in SYSCOM GLOBAL SOLUTIONS’ Tokyo office, likes to keep things simple. She eats when she’s hungry, sleeps when she’s tired, and travels when she wants to see something new. When she sees an opportunity, she seizes it. And when she’s put on a project for a client, she doesn’t stop until the client has what they need—even if it wasn’t what they thought they wanted in the first place.

“‘Keep my responsibility until I’m finished’ is my motto,” she says. “And if the job’s done, the job is still my responsibility.” It can be a high standard to set for oneself, but it keeps things clear and straightforward for Lily. She might have done her part, but until everyone else has done theirs, she can’t consider the job done. It keeps her, and the rest of her team in Tokyo, driving forward together.

Does the rest of her team feel the same way? They do, she says, because it works. “We’re all from engineering backgrounds. It’s easy for us to share our opinion and make a decision together.” She can cut straight to the heart of the matter with her team, saying, “our internal meetings are quite fast and productive. We get straight to the point, we don’t go around and around.”

Getting straight to the point helps with figuring out client needs, too. “I’ve learned how to communicate with clients to understand what they need, instead of what they want,” she says. “Different projects have different requirements from the customer. We can’t provide the same solution to all of them, even if they do have the same requirements. There are different accounting rules, different cultures.” She prioritizes finding the right solution for the customer, even if she has to tweak it to make it work for them.

“We don’t have one-size-fits-all solutions,” she says, “we have the most suitable solution for the customer.”

While she loves the directness of her team at SYSCOM, she also loves the team itself. “In our Tokyo office, we have consultants from different cultures. Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Romania.” That diversity helps them adapt to new customers and start from a position of wanting to learn a new customer’s culture. “We serve the customer, but we also try to adapt to them. It’s good to have consultants that can understand another company’s culture.”

Lily’s a traveler at heart, and still active in her school’s alumni community. It was following a lead from an alumni networking event that got her career in ERP started. “I travel every year, and one year I went to an alumni event in Vietnam and met one of my seniors. He was working for an embassy in Hanoi and told me the consolate in Ho Chi Minh was recruiting part time staff.” She decided to keep things simple: there was an opportunity here, so she jumped at it. “Back then, I wanted to just take a chance and see how far I could go. I got the job.”

We don’t have one-size-fits-all solutions, we have the most suitable solution for the customer.

Le Thi Thao Ly

Senior Functional Consultant

The experiences from that job helped shape her into the leader she’s become. “I was a bit overconfident back then. I graduated with a good degree from a school that only graduates ten students every year. Many companies try to get students from my program.”

She had real-world work skills to learn, like working in a new culture on a new team. “I had to learn their system, how to cooperate with people older than me. It was a Japanese company and they had very strict rules. Everything had to be reported to my manager. I wasn’t very familiar with that culture.”

But she learned, and quickly. Since then, she switched to SYSCOM and appreciates the blending of Japanese and global working culture she experiences here. “SYSCOM is half-Japanese, half-global. It brings the best of Japanese—constant contact, looking to your superiors as fountains of knowledge—and combines it with the directness, speed, and respect of global business culture.”

And how does that kind of hybrid environment end up working out? “It’s quite quick. We’re less worried about egos and get straight to the point.”

Lily appreciates an environment that encourages and supports that, while managing to keep things respectful and friendly. She’s found that at SYSCOM. “SYSCOM is where I feel the most comfortable. My colleagues respect and support me, and managers are always willing to listen to their staff. In internal meetings, decisions are clear and quick. We’re friendly, and brainstorm together to get to the heart of the matter.”

It seems Lily’s approach works as well with business as it does with life: keep it simple.

And if possible, have some fun.