No matter what industry you are in, we all know the value of effective project managers in a business. According to the reports of the Project Management Institute, the demand for project management experts has been leveling up more quickly than the demand for skilled workforce in other fields. Great project managers can take your company to unexpected heights with their skills, expertise, knowledge, and dedication. And, Shamli Nikam is one of them.
With over 13 years of professional experience in leading full-lifecycle projects, she has outstanding capabilities to design, implement, test, train, deploy, and follow up on a multitude of strategic Salesforce projects. Her professional journey is marked by some big companies including Qualcomm, Blue Cross of Idaho, Micron, and Simplot.
Shamli Nikam - A Solid IT Profile
An interesting fact about Shamli Nikam is that she is a self-learner and acquired all the knowledge about Salesforce on her own by the year 2010, without even foreseeing the impact this will bring to her life and future years. By that time, while working for a hospitality company, her managers assigned her the responsibility of exploring the platform. This company ended up not moving forward with it, but for Nikam, there was no way back.
The Salesforce platform has its own learning platform called Trailhead, which makes it easier for people to learn how to manage this CRM tool, and this is how, by experimenting with process designs in her developer sandbox, Shamli started gaining the knowledge that would set the foundations for the future.
In those early years, she dedicatedly invested her time to learn the PMP concepts, also on her own. This turned out to be a huge milestone in her career, as she managed to obtain a PMP (Project Management Professional) certification. Studying for PMP gave her a depth of knowledge, and also helped with the ability to see the big picture, the value of following a process, and its benefits to the organizations.
Later in her career, she learned Agile methodology which helped her tremendously, as she was able to clearly understand the difference between the traditional way of managing a project versus applying Agile concept. This methodology is a groundbreaking way to manage a project by breaking it into multiple phases: planning, executing, and evaluating.
Shamli holds a bachelor's degree in Engineering (Information Technology) and a certificate in marketing and business administration. She has also completed an MBA in international business. Additionally, her cloud computing technical skills, paired with project management and Agile knowledge, make a solid profile for IT projects.
Certifications Held by Shamli Nikam Are the Reason for Her Professional Excellence
Shamli has great aptitude which helped her acquire multiple certifications in different fields. After becoming a certified PMP, she grabbed the tag of Certified Scrum Master (CSM) from Scrum Alliance, which is a credential designed to give professionals getting started as Scrum practitioners an understanding of the project management methodology.
Her journey took a leap by the year 2019 when she became a Salesforce Certified Administrator. On top of that, she also managed to become a Salesforce Certified Sales Consultant, as well as Service Cloud Consultant in recent months. Hence, it's very clear that Shamli has already found his niche, She is one of the most qualified and certified professionals in the industry, who can efficiently take care of cloud computing projects (Salesforce.com) and CRM projects based on various methodologies like Scrum, Agile, Waterfall, etc.
Rich Experience in Salesforce Ecosystem
The certifications held by Shamli are a testimony of her extensive expertise when it comes to learning & mastering things. With deep knowledge and hands-on experience in different Clouds, including Sales, Service, Finance, Healthcare, Marketing, and Non-profit, she can lead various projects in different industries such as semiconductors, healthcare, hospitality, education, and agriculture.
Her Salesforce expertise and skillset have brought her to one of the top positions in her career, Salesforce Application Analyst at the renowned company J.R. Simplot. Salesforce is a cloud solution that is widely used through various departments of the company.
As the platform is hosted on cloud premises, it can easily be accessed from anywhere in the world, and this is one of the reasons why business owners of every industry have gained such interest in the platform in recent years.
An Introduction to the J.R. Simplot Company
Simplot is a privately held company that is a conglomerate of Global Agriculture and Global Food Businesses. It was found in the late 1920s by Mr. JR Simplot. The company grows vegetables, grains, and fruits such as potatoes, avocadoes, mangoes, peaches, quinoa, rice, and many more items.
As far as the specialization is concerned, the domains include animal science and plant science. The Company leads innovations in plant nutrition and food processing researches new ways to feed animals and sustain ecosystems, and works with farmers and partners to help feed a growing global population.
Simplot's Vision Aligns with Shamli Nikam's Interest in Farming
On a more personal aspect, Shamli has been an advocate for farming throughout her entire life, as her father owns farmland in India. She currently grows vegetables and flowers every summer in her backyard. This is where Nikam's expertise meets Simplot's vision. The company is on a mission to feed hungry kids all over the world, and Nikam feels proud and honored to support the growth of the organization to help them achieve such a goal.
Although her current position in the company is Salesforce Application Analyst, she holds a full load of responsibilities of a project manager. From business consultation for capabilities of the Salesforce platform to leading cross-functional teams, she helps bring structure to the process. She is involved in many teams and business units at Simplot, implementing her expertise in design and development of technical integration plans, and optimization and automation of the Cloud computing platform.
Giving Back to the Society
Nikam Shamli is always ready to go the extra mile and go beyond her duties to give back to society. As she has spent many years training end users at the workplace, and as a self-taught expert herself, she can spread her knowledge and teach tech-related topics in an easy manner, to those who are not that tech-savvy. Her primary focus is on women's & children's welfare, and there's a huge reason for this. Sadly, Nikam has experienced abusive relationships and understands firsthand about the struggle, negative impact, and suffering that this can cause. She wants to help other victims to overcome experiences of this type, to have the ability to become financially independent, and to bring more women to the tech environment.
She has supported non-profits for many years and is now planning to contribute to the Women's and Children's Association (WCA) of Boise, the city in Idaho where she's currently based. There is a huge refugee center in Boise
As Shamli Nikam explains in her own words "No matter how much dark you see ahead of you, if you keep walking you will see the light. All you need to do is not stop. It can get tough but do not stop. Our resilience, determination, and willingness to grow & learn things can only help society".
