Published on January 23, 2024
The Advanced Programme for Leaders 2024 (APL2024) brought together 80+ Tata Leaders, including CXOs, CEOs, Team Leaders, Deputy Team Leaders and assessors from the Business Excellence Assessment process, as well as colleagues from Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG). The annual programme took place on January 23-24, 2024, at Taj Krishna in Hyderabad. APL is organised each year at the beginning of the BE Assessment cycle to reflect on the previous BE Assessment process and plan for the upcoming cycle.
Apart from leaders sharing their experiences and expectations from the BE Assessment process, elaborate sessions were planned to understand the key changes in the new criteria (TBEM2.0).
Day 1
The first day of APL2024 started with the host for the day, Neha Pandey, Senior Manager, TBExG, welcoming all the participants. Sanjeev Singh, Head, TBExG, then addressed the gathering, discussing the challenges related to assessing large companies, newer companies as well as handling the complications of customised BE Assessments. He said that while larger companies are increasingly looking for best practices and a future roadmap with the feedback, newer companies require more handholding and conversations with the leadership team to create a buy-in for the BE Assessment process. Sanjeev also mentioned that for more mature companies, there is a need for more value addition through customisation, SMEs and reduction in effort.
In the next session ‘Reflections and Change’, Sayantan Roy, General Manager, TBExG, highlighted the qualitative and quantitative outcomes of the 2023 BE Assessment process gathered from the 360 stakeholder inputs. He also mentioned about the changes undertaken last year and its impact and the key improvement areas that needs quick actioning in the next cycle. He congratulated the Assessor community for successfully overcoming the various dilemmas highlighted last year. He concluded his session by summarising the key imperatives of BE Assessment 2024.
Manjula Sriram, General Manager, Sustainability and Communications, Tata Sustainability Group; and Gautam Gondil, Assistant Vice President - Group Safety and Health, TBExG, then took the audience through the outcomes of sustainability in the 2023 BE Assessments and the next steps. They recapped how sustainability was integrated in Category 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7, and also touched upon how the companies have fared on the sustainability factor in the BE Assessment cycle. Their presentation mentioned various best practices on sustainability that are present in Tata Steel Netherlands, Tata Power, IHCL, Tata Communications and Tata International.
Piyush Mishra, General Manager, Tata Sons; and Devraj Chattaraj, General Manager, TBExG, then talked about the outcomes of the Tata Innovation Excellence Framework (TIEF) soft launch. Piyush explained various elements of innovation and threw light on various activities related to innovation, innovation management and innovation excellence. In 2023, TBExG and the Tata Group Innovation team partnered to launch TIEF with the aim of evaluating innovation excellence and driving improvement in innovation management. TIEF is designed to be sector, industry and size agnostic and is conducted in two modes: self assessment and deep dive assessment.
Next up in the experience sharing session Nidhi Basu, Head - Corporate Quality Assurance, Total Quality Management, Tata Steel, shared her experience of assessing a company that was participating in the BE Assessment process for the first time. Through her presentation, she talked about the critical enablers for preparation, assessment and feedback. R Raghavan, Vice President & Business Head - Power, Tata Consulting Engineers, shared his experience of assessing a large and complex organisation and also shared few best practices for the upcoming BE Assessment cycle.
The post lunch session was planned to understand more about the changes in the new criteria. An informative and interactive panel discussion on TBEM2.0 - The future focused framework was moderated by Subhrajit Basu, General Manager, TBExG. The panelists included S Sambasivam, Managing Partner - Consulting and Service Integration and Debashish Das, CISO, One Tata Operating Network, from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS); Rajiv Narvekar, Practice Leader - Technology and Innovation Management, Tata Sons; and Rajat Madhur, Chief Procurement MRO and Services, Tata Steel. The panelists spoke about the changes integrated in alignment to the group focus areas like data, digital, cyber security, operations technology and supply chain resilience.
The last session of the day was on the topic of the changing role of Team Leaders in the digital and AI era by Aarthi Subramanian, Chief Digital Officer, Tata Sons; and Aparna Ganesh, Assistant Vice President - Group Digital Office, Tata Sons. Referring to Digital and AI the fourth industrial revolution, Aarthi mentioned that multiple technologies are coming together and the adoption of technologies is critical for companies. Some key trends that she mentioned included customer experience reimagination, operations transformation, connected products & services, and workforce experience & engagement. Aparna talked about key imperatives for the evolution of companies from the technological perspective and how as Team Leaders we can evaluate and appreciate the efforts put in by the companies in their Digital & AI journey.
Sanjay Rajasekaran, Senior Consultant - Group Safety and Health, TBExG, closed the day with a summary of the sessions by various speakers.
Day 2
Madhu Chaitanya, Senior Manager, TBExG, the host for the day, welcomed the participants. The first session of Day 2 was conducted by Deep Seth, Deputy General Manager, TBExG, who provided a brief overview of the Digital Execution Scorecard (DES), including the structure, KPIs, performance against those KPIs, and outcomes once the DES assessment has been completed.
This was followed by an interesting panel discussion on ‘Becoming future-ready with TBEM2.0’. The esteemed panellists were Ajoy Chawla, CEO - Jewellery Division, Titan Company; Sandeep Kumar, MD, Tata Steel Downstream Products; Willem Vermeulen, Chief Procurement Officer, Tata Steel Europe and Sonie Saran, BE Head, TCS. This session was moderated by Deepak Deshpande, Vice President, TBExG. While Sandeep talked about his experience related to BE Assessment and his expectations from the process as we leverage TBEM2.0, Ajoy threw light on the importance of building a culture of entrepreneurship and its positive impact within a company. Sonie talked about how TCS is leveraging TBEM2.0 in preparation for BE Assessments 2024. Willem mentioned the importance of the TBEM framework not being static and how it is evolving with the changes in the business world and how the key changes excite him for the next cycle of assessment.
For the last session of the day, participants were divided into three teams for breakout sessions and presentations on specific topics. Team one was led by Rashmikant, BE Head, Tata Power; Tripti Srivastava, Chief TQM, Tata Steel; supported by Shreyas Srivatsan, Deputy General Manager, TBExG, presented their views on holistical company recognition at the group level in their journey towards world-class performance. Team 2 led by Ratul Neogi, Head - Internal Audit & Business Excellence, Trent; Tarun George, CEO, Tata Insights and Quants; supported by Tanya Rego, Deputy General Manager, TBExG, provided various possible ways to effectively calibrate the assessee company’s expectations through the BE Assessment process. Team 3, led by Jitendra Manghnani, General Manager and Head - Sales and Marketing, Solubles, Tata Coffee; Asaman Patnaik, General Manager, Tata Consulting Engineers; supported by Anshul Garg, Deputy General Manager, TBExG, discussed the likely process steps for an assessment without application/structured application.
APL2024 came to a close with a summary of the day’s session and vote of thanks by Remya Mudliar, Senior Manager, TBExG.