Published on December 12, 2016
Business Excellence (BE) Heads from across the globe met in New Delhi on December 10, 2016, to learn from each other, adapt best practices and improve the journey of excellence in the Tata Group. This was the ninth BE Heads meeting under the aegis of the BE Heads Forum convened by Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG). Close to 50 BE Heads from various Tata companies joined the meeting held at Vivanta by Taj, Dwarka, New Delhi.
The meeting started off with a welcome address by S Padmanabhan, Executive Chairman, TBExG, where he stressed on the need to co-create solutions to help accelerate the journey of business excellence. He also spoke about how suggestions from BE Heads had helped the TBEM Assessment process improve. Saurav Chakrabarti, General Manager, TBExG, then went on to talk about the 20 improvement projects that were undertaken based on inputs received from the BE Heads Forum and how they helped better the performance.
Phee Teik Yeoh, CEO, Vistara, delivered the keynote address at the forum. He spoke about what makes Singapore Airlines a great way to fly. During the address, he explained how Vistara was imbibing the same customer centricity and operational processes to deliver an excellent experience to all fliers. It was an enthralling presentation which kept the members of the audience glued to their seats. Simplicity and execution excellence were two attributes that Mr Yeoh focused on during his talk. He also explained how the leadership team took turns in serving customers in flight and felt proud about it thereby sending the right message on customer service across the organisation. Mr Yeoh also spoke about some of the highly successful employee engagement initiatives in Singapore Airlines.
The next item on the agenda was two Best Practice Adaptation case studies. Last year, during a BE Heads Forum meeting, a number of BE Heads had stressed on the need for moving from Best Practices sharing to adaptation. Focused interventions from TBExG on this area helped double the number of Best Practice adaptations in 2016. Two case studies by Tata Steel Europe and Tata Power Delhi were presented in the meeting. While Tata Steel Europe learned the process of Strategy Planning and Deployment from Tata Power, Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited learned from Infiniti Retail the process of managing customer relationships using social media. Ernst Hoogenes, Director, Business Excellence, Tata Steel Europe, and Ajit Malyevar, Head of Business Excellence, Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited, made the respective presentations.
During the last BE Heads meeting held in Mumbai on July 30, a Customer Satisfaction Survey project for TBExG was started and a team from PwC was commissioned for the same. Over the course of the last six months, a team from PwC met CEOs and BE Heads of close to 50 Tata companies. Kavan Mukhtyar, Partner, PwC, presented the findings of the survey and responded to various questions that the BE Heads had.
The post lunch session saw the BE Heads being divided into six teams in a breakout session. The teams worked on suggesting improvements to the TBEM Assessment and training processes and presented to the entire audience. These inputs would now go into developing the strategy for TBExG.
The meeting ended with an open house with Mr Padmanabhan.