Christanto Suryadarma: Enabling Businesses to Make Critical Decisions Swiftly

The Sales Vice President – Southeast Asia, Zebra Technologies, Asia Pacific. With its rich history of innovation, Zebra is recognized as the industry leader in segments like; enterprise mobile computing, barcode scanning, specialty printing, RFID reader and RFID printing, and workforce management.

Since 1969, Zebra Technologies has been working behind the scenes in many industries around the world. The firm’s solutions enable businesses from varying verticals, (Retail/E-Commerce, Manufacturing, Transportation & Logistics (T&L), Healthcare, Public Sector, Hospitality, and Banking) to gain a performance edge by intelligently connecting their people, assets, and data to help them gain business visibility to make business-critical decisions swiftly and decisively.

Zebra is a keen believer in innovation. From the very first handheld laser barcode scanner, which had built-in 1979, to the Zebra Savanna Data Intelligence Platform that the company introduced in 2017, Zebra spends around 10% of our annual revenue on R&D (about $567M in 2021).

A Goal Oriented Leader

Christanto Suryadarma graduated from the Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana as an Electronics Engineer and started his professional career in IT by taking on the role of a Pre-sales Engineer, before finally moving into Sales. Before joining Zebra, Christanto was the Head of Channels, Mid-Market, SMB, Commercial, & Alibaba Cloud Partnership at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Asia Pacific. And before that, he also held various senior leadership positions at companies like the ECS Group, Intel Corporation, and Microsoft Asia Pacific.

He is currently the Sales Vice President for Zebra Technologies in the Southeast Asia region, and he is responsible for growing Zebra’s business in Southeast Asia and leading the sales team for the region. Christanto Suryadarma is involved in developing and executing strategies in alignment with Zebra’s goals and managing sales activities for the market to achieve Zebra’s overall business objectives. He is also leading Zebra’s channel sales for the Asia Pacific (excluding Greater China).

Staying Motivated

As the saying goes, “Life is never going to be smooth sailing, but I’ve learned to roll with the punches”. Christanto feels Asia Pacific is a very dynamic and complex region with diverse cultures, languages, and business environments. The biggest challenge in managing rapid changes in Asia Pacific, is the need to know the current trends and identify those that are shaping the future.

He also feels, leaders need to respond quickly to changes, to be able to build capacity and nurture the ecosystem of clients and partners to generate both short-, and long-term sustainable business growth. Christanto Suryadarma says, “More importantly, we must be able to execute it with integrity, passion, and resilience.”

Making Efficient and Sustainable Solutions

According to Christanto Suryadarma, Zebra already has quite an extensive portfolio of solutions, that can be used to cater to the varying needs of its customers, including retail/e-commerce, manufacturing, T&L, Healthcare, the Public Sector, and other businesses. That said, Zebra is continuously improving itself and enhancing, its product offerings through R&D and acquisitions.

Current Market Trends

Christanto Suryadarma believes we live in an on-demand economy where organizations must digitalize their operations to remain competitive. This on-demand economy has been accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, due to lockdowns and social distancing measures. And it looks like things won’t be going back to what it was before COVID.

So, he feels the only way for businesses to stay competitive in this brave new front is to undergo digital transformation to achieve greater efficiency and results through the adoption of the right technologies. As the pioneers at the edge of the enterprise, Zebra has been empowering the front-line of businesses for more than 50 years, and it continues to invest in innovations to do so.

Helping Others in Need

For Christanto, success is not about earning a lot of money. It’s also about having the ability to help others in need. He says, “We should not aim for personal success. Rather, we should aim to become significant. Because to be Successful is self-centered, while being Significant means going beyond-self.”

He also started a literacy movement named “Mybook MyCountry” in 2017, which is focused on helping underprivileged children in remote areas of Indonesia. Christanto Suryadarma has worked with one of the largest publishers in Indonesia to get new books at discounted rates and liaised with local volunteers and educators to open up their homes and schools and converted them into reading gardens that can be accessed by underprivileged children and students in the vicinity. To date, up to 59, Reading Gardens have been set up in remote areas of Indonesia, and it has helped about 10,000 underprivileged children and students.

Transforming the Organization

Since joining Zebra in Q3 2021, Christanto has transformed Zebra Team in Southeast Asia to adopt the growth mindset, which is to be Inclusive, Innovative, and Collaborative. As a result, Christanto and his team achieved strong double-digit Y-o-Y Growth in Q4 FY21 and gained significant market share in key segments. They also doubled the firm’s earnings from its services and achieved a higher Employee Engagement Index.

Moving forward, Christanto’s vision is to make Zebra Technologies and its Partners the leader in industry transformation in Southeast Asia. His secondary role is to build and manage a strong channel ecosystem in the Asia Pacific (excluding Greater China) through the Engage-Enable-Excite (Three E’s) strategy and execution.

Picture of the Future

Christanto believes, with the rise of industrial Revolution 4.0 and the on-demand economy, companies are racing against time to digitalize their businesses to keep up with the growing demands of their customers.

Therefore, Zebra is in a very exciting space to contribute to the fast-growing on-demand economy and next industrial revolution by making the World Works Better with intelligent automation, connecting people, tasks, and data, and creating insights with AI and Machine Vision to make faster, better decision making.