Since joining Carelon Global Solutions in 2021, Sharath Ankaraju has been instrumental in bringing in new processes, frameworks and technologies to optimize the $100-plus million contingent workforce program and ensure compliance. Among his accomplishments: He put in place a vendor governance program, improving risk mitigation and spend management, and established supplier training programs, mentoring small vendors to ensure success within the organization. He also initiated several hiring models, reducing time to fill by 50% and improving stakeholders’ business experience.

He first started managing contingent workforces in India back in 2010 when it was still a relatively new concept in the country and everything was managed manually with local documents and spreadsheets — a far outdated and time-costly system. Since then, he has built programs from scratch, including program framework, governance and VMS implementation.

Ankaraju moved on to Verizon in 2011, building processes and frameworks while ensuring minimal disruption to the traditional hiring format. Within four years, Ankaraju successfully implemented a VMS and MSP partner for the program, enhancing the operations and improving the quality of hiring.

In 2019, Ankaraju joined Deloitte Consulting and again played a crucial role in managing the contingent workforce program and introducing various hiring models and incentives for vendors to ensure successful partnership. Here, he focused on program audit and compliance of timesheet processes, ensuring that processes met contract compliance.

“When you give weight to people’s experience and service excellence,” Ankaraju says, “it is important to bring in 360-degree view while running large-scale programs with an intention of #YouAskWeDeliver.”