Published on October 07, 2025
The Tata group’s Business Excellence movement has completed three decades of its transformative journey, marking a landmark milestone in fostering a culture of organisational excellence across the Group. Initiated in 1994 with the adoption of JRD Quality Values and a unified Tata brand, the journey has enabled companies to benefit from periodic assessments that provide outside-in perspectives, leadership insights, competency development, and feedback-led improvements.
The TBEM Assessments for 2025 bring together 13 Tata companies from diverse sectors, reaffirming the Group’s enduring commitment to excellence and continuous improvement. This year’s cycle marks an important milestone as it embraces the refreshed TBEM 2.0 criteria, aligned closely with the Group’s strategic priorities, to further deepen value creation and organisational learning.
The breadth of participation reflects the remarkable scale of engagement across the Group, with over 200 assessors identified from 38 Tata companies. Each assessment team is supported by subject-matter experts and domain experts, ensuring depth, rigour, and relevance in the feedback process.
The TBEM platform is, in many ways, the largest congregation of Tata talent working together intensively for one purpose – support the excellence journey of Group companies. It serves as a crucible for cross-learning and cross-sharing, where assessors sharpen their knowledge, broaden their perspectives, and develop new skills. Under the guidance of seasoned Mentors and Team leaders, the process not only delivers actionable insights for companies but also nurtures the next generation of leaders within the Group. This dual focus—driving business excellence while cultivating talent—remains at the heart of the TBEM philosophy.
This year, nearly one-fifth (20%) of the assessors are women and two-fifths (40%) of the assessors are participating for the first time. The process has welcomed seven new Mentors, five new Team Leaders, and nine new Deputy Leaders, representing both service and manufacturing sectors, thereby strengthening the leadership pool that will guide future assessments.
The 2025 assessment cycle is being carried out in three phases.
Each year, the TBEM framework and the assessment process are reviewed, and enhancements are made to ensure the Group’s assurance process stays relevant and continues to support companies on their journey toward performance excellence. This year, the following changes have been incorporated aiming to make the assessment process more relevant, rigorous, and impactful.
Tata Business Excellence Model (TBEM2.0)
- Organisational Profile: Now recommends inclusion of the Organisational Excellence Plan.
- Customer Engagement: Adds focus on communicating the Customer Value Proposition, with enhanced coverage of relationship and complaint management.
- Data & Digital: Introduces questions on data analytics impact and GenAI integration in processes.
- Operations: Greater emphasis on product/service design and process effectiveness.
- Results: Expanded reporting on customer experience, complaint management, and innovation metrics.
- Cyber Excellence: New criteria for Cyber Process and Results aligned with Group priorities.
Assessment process:
- Lines of Inquiry-led Assessments: Using Lines of Inquiry to link business imperatives with the TBEM framework for deeper insights gathering. This ensures more contextual information gathering during site visits and allows assessors to align insights in the final feedback presentations.
- Focus on Cybersecurity: Cybersecurity SMEs are included in every assessment team to evaluate cyber maturity.
- GenAI Integration: Tata Sons’ secure GenAI platform enhances assessor efficiency through smart document analysis and summarisation.
The TBEM assessments for 2025 have only just been set in motion, with many more lined up before the cycle concludes in November. The road ahead promises rich learning and deeper insights across the Group. We extend our sincere thanks to all participating companies and Business Excellence Heads for their steadfast support, and a special acknowledgement to the assessors who step forward to take on this important responsibility. Their dedication and tireless efforts remain the driving force behind delivering world-class outcomes and sustaining the spirit of excellence across the Tata group.