About

Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department? Smita Priyadarshini is the senior managing legal director, for Dell Technologies and reports to the APJC senior vice president, legal based out of Singapore. She is the APJC regional legal lead for commercial sales and services business unit. In addition, Priyadarshini also supports various geo, regional and global portfolios for Dell Technologies’ various business units and is responsible for implementing trainings on compliance related aspects for the business units that she supports. Within Dell, Priyadarshini pioneered the concept of “Global CLaaSS”. CLaaSS an acronym for “Contracts and Legal as a Shared Service” and the concept was based on hiring legal talent locally in India for providing legal support to various regions and businesses of Dell Technologies. With inception of Global CLaasSS, Dell was happy tapping on the legal talent pool in India, and leveraging India based lawyers to support the business globally. Having originated from Dell’s strategic priorities of “Defining the Future Today’, the ClaaSS team is working with a mission to be the best cost location for the business. The team has successfully implemented many innovative ideas to provide cost efficient yet quality legal services for internal clients. Resource to provide legal support to multiple regions on shared cost basis. This is not only monetarily beneficial but brings in additional benefits of keeping the regional teams up and running round the clock, leading to increased customer satisfaction due to quick turnarounds. The team is structured as follows: two consultants, seven senior advisors, 10 senior contract specialists and one MBA. The team consists of senior professionals such as Vikramaditya Rai and Abhishek Mathur who both serve as consultants, legal counsel as well as Samir Mishra and Bhawna Butta who work as senior advisors, legal counsel. What are the most significant projects that your legal team has been involved with in the last two years? The team supports several commercial transactions across APJC for Dell Technologies and has been involved in several multi-million complex transactions; each one of which has been unique and challenging. Helping the company win business and increase its revenue whilst at the same time ensuring that it is legally protected has been the overarching driving force for the legal team. In addition, CLaaSS team members have worked on many significant transactions for the business. However, given the confidential nature of the work rendered, it is not possible to provide the details. In general, the team has provided end-to-end support on various key projects and initiatives of varied nature i.e. from major customer deals, to matters related to compliance, regulatory, invoicing, procurement
and IT. What recent political, economic or regulatory changes in India have impacted your company and the team the most? The economic and regulatory markets worldwide are dynamic and evolving. Lots of challenges have come our way in this regard. From a local perspective, Dell Technologies has felt the impact of the changes in the regulatory environment. Going forward, we will also be closely monitoring the impact of changes in the realms of data protection and information security worldwide. What will be the main focus for the company in the next 12 months and how does the team intend to assist with this? In the last couple of years, Dell Technologies as a company has gone through humongous changes in its quest of being the market leader. Dell has witnessed the major acquisition of EMC on the one hand and divestiture of legacy Perot Services to NTT Data on the other. In parallel, Dell became private in 2013 and thereafter returned to the public stock market in December 2018. The biggest challenge for the ClaaSS team was to quickly adapt itself and prove profitable for the business at such a challenging time. Going forward, Dell Technologies will be focused on successfully integrating its various business units to successfully emerge as an end to end service provider within the IT industry. The team is completely aligned to the company vision and have strategies and plans to achieve these objectives. How has the team harnessed technology to improve output or drive efficiencies? ‘You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect it to keep working’, is the belief of our chairman and CEO Michael Dell. We have the opportunity to lead the business in innovation through technology investment and adoption. Future of legal transformation is a key priority for Dell legal on an ongoing basis under which we are exploring various options for intelligent automation, process optimization and proactive risk management.

In addition, the CLaaSS team has been the pioneer in adoption of various tools and mechanisms geared towards bringing about greater efficiency at every level. Various automation and standardization options are continuously being explored and developed for team to be more effective and efficient such as TDM for contract data management, SFDC for monitoring a matter throughout its life cycle, adopting various eLearning modules for training and Tymetrix for legal matter management. Can you sum up the team ethos? The team is comprised of twenty lawyers who support a multitude of legal portfolios for Dell cutting cross various markets and jurisdictions spanning across the globe. The value add of such a multifarious team cannot be overstated. Having originated from Dell’s strategic priorities of “Defining the Future Today”, ClaaSS team is working with a mission to be the Best Cost Location for the business. The team has successfully implemented many innovative ideas to provide cost efficient yet quality legal services for internal clients. Global CLaaSS is a very close knit team. It has successfully witnessed and lived through several acquisitions and divestures: Perot Systems to Dell, Dell Services to NTT Data & thereafter the acquisition of EMC by Dell. Having undergone and lived through a series of acquisitions one needs to be adaptable so that one can make the best of what the external environment throws at you. The global CLaaSS team also share a strong belief in giving back to the community, through time and creating opportunities for underprivileged and have undertaken several initiatives for such people and have used our skills to bring about awareness about law generally in these strata of society. CSR is not a task for us, it serves as an outlet of our driving need to contribute in our little way to humanity. We have always stepped into shoes of each other to ensure that we deliver the best quality work seamlessly. The atmosphere is abuzz with exchange of ideas and energy. Attrition rate is very low due to strong leadership and positive governance.