Manoj Khavatkopp — Member of the Month, March 2019

People often ask me how a Member of the Month is chosen.

OK, that’s a lie. People really don’t ask me that a lot. Which is good, because I wouldn’t want to admit to the bribery involved…

OK, that’s a lie too. Numbers are involved, but not in a monetary sort of way.

In each month’s introductions, I’ll usually mention a person’s contributions — dozens of blogs of this, hundreds of answers that, and so on. But those types of numbers don’t tell the full story. If they did, I could answer a dozen random questions a day — amassing thousands within a year — which might be impressive, if not for the fact that I wouldn’t know what I was talking about, so all of my answers would be wrong.

Our reputation program rewards quality over quantity for a reason.

A member might catch attention for responding to a whole bunch of questions, but we’re most interested in how many answers get accepted, upvoted…and even downvoted. We also look at missions completed, badges earned, and general community response, to get a sense of whether a member’s contributions truly are helpful.

Which brings me to March’s Member of the Month: Manoj K.

Yep, Manoj meets the standard criteria for high activity: He’s answered more than five hundred questions. But what about community reaction? In terms of answers accepted, he’s at about a rate of 25% — a number that might seem low, until you consider that getting people to accept answers and close questions is an ongoing challenge (something I acknowledged last month). That’s why, in addition to counting accepted answers, we look at the number of upvotes: the community’s way of saying, “That’s right.” Manoj has plenty of those…and no downvotes.

Dive a little deeper — as I did — and you’ll unearth even more substance. I didn’t read all of Manoj’s answers, but picking a solid representation of his contributions randomly, I discovered a member (of the month) willing to discuss problems patiently. I saw several conversations in the comments in which Manoj did his best to guide posters. Plenty of times he provided screen shots along with detailed instructions to assist fellow members. Heck, he even did the searches that the posters probably should have done themselves, pointing to SAP Community blog posts and answers with the right solutions — and never with a snide crack to go with the link.

I was also happy to see Manoj often involved in the same threads with other members in the Hall of Fame as they tried to help someone looking for more information. It pleases me when the best members travel in the same circles (or, in this case, side by side in comments and answers).

Makes me wonder if they’ve made a connection — a sort of informal Member of the Month club. That would be cool.

Guess I should ask Manoj…

Congratulations, Manoj! How’s it going?

Well I was really surprised to see your message after coming back from vacation. A great welcome back from vacation. Thanks again!

You’re welcome…and I hope you enjoyed your vacation. But now that it’s back to work, I see from your profile that you work for Deloitte. Is that accurate? If so, what is your position there? 

Yes, I am currently working in Deloitte as an integration consultant, mainly on SAP PI/PO and CPI.

What did you do before joining Deloitte?

I graduated in computer science in 2013. I joined Accenture as an ABAP consultant in my early days, then I switched to integration platform, which I am much more interested in. Now I have been with Deloitte for the past two years.

When and why did you join the community?

I joined the community in 2014, when I was put as an integration consultant role in a project. At that time, I had no idea what SAP PI/PO was about. But thanks to the community members, they made my life easy at this early stage of learning by answering every question in detailed manner, which could be understood by any beginner.

Manoj Khavatkopp. Integration consultant. Traveler. Member of the Month for March.

How did you develop your areas of expertise?

As said, I had started my SAP journey as an ABAP consultant, but being from a computer science background, I was much more interested in Java. That is when I decided to switch to process integration and orchestration.

Here’s the big question: How do you find the time to answer so many questions? On top of that, how do you find the time to provide all the details — and, in some cases, search for the answers on behalf of the poster?

I try to check the community at least once a day, either during working hours as and when I get time or some time on the way back to home. The reason why I like to check is that there is always a new question/blog which helps myself to try it out and help in learning. So helping other community members is helping myself for self-learning. As Eng Swee Yeoh has mentioned, “The true value of this community is in its people.”

When looking look through your answer and comment threads, I saw two familiar names: Harish Mistri and Evgeniy Kolmakov, both of whom also received the Member of the Month honor. I even saw them responding to some of your questions during your early days with the community. Have you ever spoken to them about your shared areas of professional interest?

Harish and Evgeniy have been helping from my initial days of SCN till now. I always get to learn something new from them as and when I interact with them on any query/comment. And also I would like to thank Hareesh Gampa (with whom I have worked closely on one of the projects) and Eng Swee Yeoh and Vadim Klimov for their wonderful blogs and out-of-box solutions.

OK, we’ve already established how busy you are, but I assume work and SAP Community don’t consume your every waking moment. What do you like to do when you aren’t working?

I am mostly into traveling or gaming when I am not working.

And with that, I should let you get back to work — and/or answering member questions. Thanks for all you do for SAP Community — and congrats again on being Member of the Month for March!

Thanks again to my peer members for helping me from my early days to reach Member of the Month.