Lab Top – 7 Questions for Women in Tech: Nova Silalahi

Highlighting women in tech: Meet Nova Silalahi, Senior Customer Engagement Executive at SAP SuccessFactors. Nova works at SAP Indonesia, where she is responsible for Customer Success, Retention & Adoption. To her, success is a sense of purpose: staying true to her core values, helping others and striving for self-improvement

1. Please explain: What is your specific job?

I am Senior Customer Engagement Executive at SAP SuccessFactors. I am responsible for Customer Success, Retention & Adoption in Indonesia. To help our SAP SuccessFactors customers get the most out of our Human Experience Management solutions.

Women in Tech From Around the World! This time we have Nova Silalahi from Jakarta, Indonesia!

2. Your initial spark to enter this industry?

Purpose. Satisfaction. Fulfilment.

I have been working with HC practitioners since 2007, helping them with HC technology to create an authentic Human Experience Management and partnering to connect existing leaders with future leaders.

When I am driven by these intrinsic motivations, I push the limits of my potential, my life gains purpose and good things follow.

3. Your most exciting project to date?

The most exciting projects were always the joint ones with customers.

Starting from convincing the C-level to put their trust and invest in SAP SuccessFactors, up and down in the implementation stage, setting up the adoption strategy. Now we have become strong customer advocates in the region. We stand up with high confidence before the C-level and present the customers’ business improvement percentage by using SAP SuccessFactors.

4. Top skills that anyone who wants to work in tech needs?

Learn to communicate with both words and actions. Words to say what you will do, and actions to show that you do what you say.

Grow a network by being both a 'giver' and a 'taker'.

Don't make success a goal. Find work you love, figure out how it creates value and become great at doing it. Success will follow.

5. What advice would you give to young professionals starting in tech?

Believe in yourself: never underrate your value. Let your actions be guided by your values.

Be helpful, not disrespectful. It's less about showing how smart you are and more about supporting one another.

Earn a reputation for integrity, and build a network that includes influential people who will watch your back.

6. Your biggest role models?

My parents. Through them, I inherited incredible values: to live a life with purpose, to become the best version of me, to deliver outstanding results and to help other people in need.

7. People or media to follow?

My customers’ blogs: Simon Sinek and Josh Bersin.