Published on February 01, 2023
70+ Tata leaders, including Team Leaders, Deputy Leaders and Process Consultants from the Business Excellence (BE) Assessment process, met at the Advanced Programme for Leaders (APL2023) on January 24, 2023, held at Taj Swarna, Amritsar. APL is facilitated each year at the beginning of the TBEM Assessment cycle to reflect on the recently conducted BE Assessment process and characterise priorities and prospects for the upcoming cycle.
In addition to leaders sharing their experiences, best practices and expectations from the assessment process, other discussion points included fair treatment to customers, integrating sustainability into TBEM and updates on digital excellence and cyber excellence journeys.
In his opening address, Sanjeev Singh, Vice President of Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG), focused on the changing context of BE Assessments. He underlined the group’s focus on Project Aalingana. He emphasised on embedding sustainability into business strategy by focusing on three interconnected pillars: driving the decarbonisation of businesses and value chain; applying a systemic, circular economic approach to reduce resource use and waste; and preserving and restoring the natural environment. He further deliberated on the importance of supply chain resilience, talent management and organisations' digital well-being. Mr Singh also spoke about the future of Assessments, the need to strengthen the Bluebook, the Group’s engagement with Baldridge and how the Assessors mix plays a pivotal role.
In the next session, Subhrajit Basu, General Manager, TBExG, highlighted the qualitative and quantitative outcomes of the 2022 BE Assessment process. He deliberated on areas that went well during the assessment and areas that needed enhancement. He also explained the perfect assessment model, dilemmas and imperatives that must be addressed in the forthcoming assessments.
Adrian Terron, Vice President, Tata Sons, helped participants understand more about the concepts of fair treatment to customers. He highlighted how the organisations' processes should be agile enough to meet customer expectations in a way that customers deem appropriate. He also presented case studies from within and outside the Tata Group to explain the facets of fair treatment to customers. Gautam Gondil, Vice President, TBExG, explained the changes proposed in the TBEM criteria on Sustainability and comprehended the purpose of integrating sustainability elements into TBEM. He also shared his thoughts on materiality and the importance of identifying the relevant ESG issues for an organisation.
The subsequent two sessions were updates on the digital and cyber excellence journeys. Vinod Kumar, Vice President, TBExG, spoke about the differentiation between data excellence and digital excellence. He also talked about the Digital Execution Scorecard (DES), a Gartner proprietary tool, that group companies are leveraging to understand their progress on digital excellence. He also emphasised the DES Framework and its benefits. Mr Singh then explained the Tata Cyber Excellence Framework, which is based on the TCS Blue Tick framework. He shared the progress made on the cyber excellence journey focusing on the assessment process and capability building.
The post-lunch sessions started with experience-sharing sessions from Team Leaders. Asaman Prasad Patnaik, Dy General Manager - Strategy and Business Excellence, Tata Consulting Engineers, shared his experience leading an assessment team for the first time. P Anand, Vice President - Marketing and Sales at Tata Steel Group, shared his experience of leveraging results and evidence to deliver key theme-based final feedback.
To further sharpen the current descriptors for the specific maturity, participants sought help from leaders in defining the following attributes through a break-out session. The team was categorised into four groups, each defining the characteristics of either an Emerging Industry leader, Industry Leader, Benchmark Leader and World Class Leader.
At the end of the break-out session, Willem Vermeulen, Director of Sales, Tata Steel Netherlands; Sridhar Sarathy, Sr Vice President, Tata Capital; Sonie Saran, BE Head, Tata Consultancy Services; and TVS Shenoy, Chief Commercial Officer, Tata Steel, presented attributes for Emerging Industry Leader, Industry Leader, Benchmark Leader and World Class Leader.
The day ended with an open house session with S Padmanabhan, Chairman of the Governing Council, TBExG. He applauded the Team Leaders for their contribution in making the Assessment process relevant and a value-add for the companies. He deliberated on the importance of assessing the future readiness of an organisation and continuing to customise assessment approaches for companies based on their maturity levels. Mr Padmanabhan also spoke about how Subject Matter Experts and Financial and Safety Analysts are elevating the outcome of the exercise. He also shared his thoughts on the future of Assessment integrating multiple performance excellence frameworks, emerging recognition criteria and the importance of digital adoption.
Sayantan Roy, Deputy General Manager, TBExG, moderated the programme.