Published on August 28, 2020
Tata Motors is developing a ‘Central Analytics’ function, which will generate insights to enable data-driven decision making across the hierarchy. The core team of Tata Motors working on developing the function were desirous of revalidating their action plan. They were keen to venture into a matured analytics journey and eliminate potential risks by adopting promising practices and leverage learning experiences from other Group companies.
Towards this objective, they wanted to connect with a Group company to understand the following:
- The methodology adopted to prioritise analytics projects
- The governance structure to enable analytics
- The delivery and service model adopted while beginning the analytics journey
Accordingly, Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) connected Tata Motors with Titan and Tata Steel over EPIC sessions.
Titan
In the first session on July 23, 2020, Yashwanth Kumar, Head of Analytics and Insight, and Santosh Vuppala, Senior Manager, Analytics, shared details about the analytics function at Titan. They elaborated on how the function began working four years ago with the vision of creating a data-driven enterprise. They also threw light on the range of services that they provide to different functions and departments.
The analytics team’s priorities were aligned with the strategic objectives of the various businesses with an intent to drive incremental revenues. Leveraging Encircle (its customer loyalty database), Customer Relationship Management campaigns were gradually optimised to deliver incremental revenues. The strategy included motivating customers to buy more, reactivating dormant customers and nudging customers to buy across divisions.
It has gradually created a mature process for campaign management. After building its competencies around customer insights, the analytics team currently engages with over 30 separate departments to enable data-based decision making. The scope of Titan’s analytics services includes merchandising, retail, manufacturing, finance, and HR functions.
The EPIC session also saw the Tata Motors team learn more about Titan’s Prometheus platform, which is being used to deliver artificial intelligence and machine learning services across the enterprise.
Over the years, Titan’s analytics team has identified combining business hypotheses with data insights and collectively deploying analytics as a critical driver for business success.
Tata Steel
After the EPIC session with Titan, the Tata Motors team engaged with Sarajit Jha, Chief - Business Transformation and Digital Solution, from Tata Steel, on the same topic. Mr Jha revealed details about how Tata Steel began working with analytics, four years ago. He spoke at length about the initiatives, including ‘what is digital?' (2015)’ to 'doing it digital' (2019) and making Tata Steel an intelligent, digital, and agile enterprise. The building blocks of Tata Steel’s digital journey are centred on ‘Cloud for speed, data for decision making and AI for driving better decisions’.
Tata Steel aspires to become a global leader in the digital industry by 2025. Tata Steel, in the recent past, has undertaken many digital initiatives to achieve EBITDA to the tune of $2 billion in a period of three to four years. Recently, Tata Steel’s Kalinganagar plant was included in the list of World Economic Forum’s Global Lighthouse Network, a community of manufacturers widely known for applying fourth industrial revolution technologies to drive financial and operational impact. Mr Jha further explained the governing principles of Tata Steel’s digital strategy, industry 4.0 architecture and components for rapid scale-up of business transformation – capability, computing infrastructure, technology benchmarking and execution methodology.
The fruitful EPIC sessions suggested broader exchanges of know-how between the companies shortly.
Participant speak
The central analytics team at Tata Motors is grateful for the help extended by TBExG. We appreciate the collaborative effort towards deeper understanding for successfully leveraging analytics by conducting benchmarking sessions on best practices around the globe and within the Tata Group. It has certainly strengthened our foundation and sharpened our roadmap. We thank the TBExG team for their continuous support and engagement.
— Rohan Ghate, Deputy General Manager - Information Governance, Tata MotorsAbout the EPIC Programme
The Excellence Practice Implementation Champion (EPIC) programme carries forward the Tata Best Practices programme by helping companies adopt best practices from the group through a structured collaborative process, under the guidance of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) from Best Practice organisations. EPIC is a platform that brings together the provider and the receiver companies together to enable successful adaptation and implementation of best practices.