If you need to get something done Richard Zhou is your guy.
Richard is among the very best senior technical people I have known. He is still able to roll up his sleeves and dive into the details when required. At the same time he is able to take an overall system view and focus on the big picture as well.
Besides being highly technical Richard also has a strong business sense. He understands the need to manage costs, drive revenue hard, and focus on early profitability.
Richard is a hacker, an architect, an operations jock, a QA guy, a project lead, a manager, and an entrepreneur all rolled into one. A human Ginsu knife!
Besides hard technical and business skills, Richard also has the soft people skills that make him a great leader. He understand that success comes from building people up and creating empowered teams. He is a great mentor and coach who works transparently and tirelessly to help people and build team spirit.
These are the qualities that most recently helped Richard deliver the SageOne line of web and mobile products to market. It was done in record time and at a fraction of the cost one may expect, especially for projects executed within a large global company. The offerings included all the supporting infrastructure and services that products of this type require - billing and payment systems, communities, websites, CRM integration etc. - a major undertaking requiring Richard to build several cross-functional global teams of developers, QA and operations personnel. This was further complicated by the fact that many of the people on those teams had never worked with web and mobile technologies before. The project was a substantial challenge for Richards patience, mentoring and coaching, as well as diplomatic skills, where decision making and execution spanned several business units and continents. Despite the challenges he came through with flying colors.
Prior to SageOne Richard played a key leadership role at Sage championing the need for products like Billing Boss, Payment Boss and Sage Spark and then building and delivering them. These were Sage’s very first web and mobile offerings, so Richard and his teammates are the true web and mobile trailblazers at Sage. They have been pivotal in helping Sage start its own transformation from a company that has traditionally offered licensed on-premise desktop and server based solutions to one that is ever more relying on a subscription-based business model built on cloud and mobile offerings.
In the final analysis, Richards best asset is his attitude and energy. He is very results focused and is one of the most positive cheerful people I have met. His attitude and energy level are infectious, and this is a key reason for Richards many successes. I look forward to continuing our personal and professional association in the future.
Sunil Pande
