Published on August 02, 2023
Like every year, Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) facilitated a series of learning sessions (AssessmentINSIGHTS 2023) to provide key learnings and insights to Assessors as they progress with the Business Excellence (BE) Assessment 2023. The AssessmentINSIGHTS sessions were facilitated in July and August every Tuesday and Friday for first-time and experienced Assessors. These sessions aimed at building awareness of key focus areas, process, and criteria changes and ensuring the Assessments remain Customised, Collaborative and Celebrated for all stakeholders. These planned sessions helped the Assessors calibrate, deliberate, and evaluate the findings during the Assessments.
In 2023, nine orientation sessions for specific assessor roles were conducted and led by Tata Leaders, TBExG consultants, Team Leaders, and experienced Assessors. The July 4, 2023, session was planned for first-time Team Leaders and Deputy Leaders and facilitated by Vinod Kumar, Assistant Vice President, TBExG, and Tarun George, CEO of Tata Insights and Quants (Tata IQ). The session helped Leaders understand their pivotal role in the Assessment team and deliverables. Future and sustainability-focused outcomes, the importance of the 3 Cs — Customised, Collaborative and Celebrated — being agile and flexible in the entire journey were some of the key takeaways for the Leaders.
Devraj Chattaraj, General Manager, TBExG, facilitated the next session on July 7, 2023, which was specially curated for the new Assessor role, i.e., internal Assessors. The Assessors were taken through the critical steps of the Assessment process and the responsibilities of the internal Assessor in co-creating the Assessment. Buddhiraj Deshmukh, BU Head, Air International, TTR Thermal Systems, and Adhiraj Sengupta, Lead - Retail Process & New Store Openings, Croma, shared their experiences as internal Assessors and described the importance of the role in elevating the value of the Assessment process for the companies.
| S. No | AssessmentINSIGHTS Topic | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | First-Time Team Leader and Deputy Leader Orientation | 04-Jul |
| 2 | Being an Internal Assessor | 07-Jul |
| 3 | Assessments 2023 - Process Changes and Priorities | 11-Jul |
| 4 | Being a First-time Assessor | 18-Jul |
| 5 | Leveraging Financial Analyst Inputs During the Assessments | 21-Jul |
| 6 | Digital Enablement of Assessment Process | 25-Jul |
| 7 | Assessing Innovation Management Process | 01-Aug |
| 8 | Assessing Sustainability Efforts in Organisations | 08-Aug |
| 9 | Understanding Customer Mega Trends | 11-Aug |
The process-related changes in Assessments 2023, and the effective methods adapted from the best practices, including the pitstop approach, lines of enquiry, and business understanding calls, were discussed in the next session led by Subhrajit Basu, General Manager, TBExG, on July 11, 2023. The session was planned for all Assessor roles, and deliberation on the common Assessment dilemmas and the revised scoring band descriptors were the key highlights of the session.
The next session was planned for all first-time Assessors, and Sayantan Roy, General Manager, TBExG, touched base on the Assessment process and priorities. The first-time Assessors understood the criticality of their role and the value they would create in the entire Assessment process. This session was facilitated on July 18, 2023, and was joined by experienced Assessors Arun Kamath, Regional Parts Manager - Retail Network, Tata Motors, and Saurav Basu, Head - Wealth and Moneyfy, Tata Capital. They shared their experience and deliberated on the importance of a learning mindset and the contributions first-time Assessors should make. The Assessors also understood the Buddy system, which will help them evolve as they progress in the BE journey.
Analysis of financial performance is core to any Assessment. The next session, facilitated by Siddharth Bhatt, Deputy General Manager, and Anshul Garg, Deputy General Manager, TBExG, reiterated the purpose and relevance of financial analysis and ways to utilise the findings for strategically significant Assessment outcomes.
TBExG has been making relevant inclusions in the Assessment Hub (application) to optimise the Assessors' efforts across the Assessment process. Vidya Raut, Assistant Manager, and Neha Pandey, Senior Manager, TBExG, covered the 'Digital Enablement of the Assessment Process'. The Assessors understood the critical changes in the Assessment Hub and had hands-on experience with the Assessment portal.
In the next session, Ravi Arora, Vice President, and Piyush Mishra, General Manager of Group Digital and Innovation, appraised the Assessors on the key processes enabling innovation management. This August 1, 2023, session helped the Assessors understand the Tata Innovation Excellence Framework (TIEF) and how it can be used in the ongoing Assessments. Managing innovation activities, developing, and improving an organisation's innovation management capabilities and performance, and leveraging ecosystems to optimise innovation strategy planning and execution were the resonating concepts inferred by the Assessors from this session.
On August 4, 2023, Gautam Gondil, Assistant Vice President, TBExG, facilitated the next session on 'Assessing Sustainability Efforts'. The Assessors amassed insights on the group's focus on sustainability and critical changes in the TBEM criteria. They gained perspective on ESG governance and material sustainability issues for different industry verticals.
The AssessmentINSIGHTS session concluded with Harish Bhat, Brand Custodian, Tata Sons, and Adrian Terron, Vice President, Brand and Marketing, Tata Sons, facilitating the 'Customer Mega Trends' session. Punit Mittal, Head - Customer Centricity, and Swati Shankar, Team Member - Customer Centricity, from Tata Sons, co-facilitated this session on August 11, 2023.
The Assessors understood the importance of the 3 Ds – Design, Develop and Delight of customer centricity. They deduced insights on how an organisation can identify future consumers, gauge its ability to create a deep understanding of customer needs and analyse its proficiency at activating and engaging customers. The Assessors realised how the brands must balance the opportunity and risk of business and talent competition in India, a dominant force in today's global economy. The Assessors also learnt about premiumisation trends, customer personalisation, and fandom trends. The importance of brands leveraging social marketing through influencers and consumers' changing preferences for eco-friendly and socially responsible products and brands was also deliberated.
Feedback from participants was collected after every session to improvise and provide Assessors with the best insights. The average NPS across all the sessions was recorded at > 85, confirming that the participants found the sessions relevant and essential. 439 unique participants from 50+ Tata companies gained knowledge, experience, and insights from the AssessmentINSIGHTS 2023 sessions.
Participants speak:
The session helped me understand the roles and responsibilities of a first-time Assessor.
Great initiative taken by TBExG with these sessions, it helped me understand the process changes and how to deal with common dilemmas.
Excellent session. I understood how internal Assessors play a pivotal role in the Assessment process by helping strengthen the insights and contributing towards actioning of Assessment outcomes.
Great initiatives on digitalisation and excellent walkthrough session. Kudos to Tata Business Excellence Group.
Insightful session by the team on how innovation management can be seen as an integral part of management activities of the organisation.
An excellent and intuitive session by Harish Bhat and team. I learned a lot today on changing customer trends and preferences.