Richard Branson, Founder Virgin Atlantic, said, “I have always believed that the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers and that people flourish when they are praised.” In many ways what he said, sums up our experiences as well, with talent management and customer centricity.

In February 2016, almost one and half years into the Phase One of deployment of Shared Services Operating Model within Piramal Enterprises Ltd’s Healthcare businesses, while the completion of planned process transitions was very much in sight, an obvious question bothering us was what’s next? With an able team at the helm & strong leadership support at all levels, the Global Business Shared Services (GBSS) team had been able to manage systematic process transitions and achieve rapid process stabilization.

However for the moment, the larger questions were about sustaining the momentum achieved, keeping the shared services team engaged & motivated and leveraging the shared services model in other operating entities within the Piramal Group so that they too can reap the benefits of this successfully running operating model of Healthcare Division.

Within the GBSS, one could already see some of the challenges that lay ahead, like:

• Process/ Operations teams operating in silos,
• Inability of the GBSS team to appreciate beneficiary Business Units/ employees as (internal) customers rather than colleagues; and
• Poor communication with the customers, including delays and, at times, failure to respond to incoming customer emails/ queries/ complaints.

On the other hand, the internal customers were perhaps, beginning to believe that the GBSS team took a very narrow process view, without an end-to-end outlook on the composite value chain/ work-stream. They felt that the GBSS team does not take accountability for business outcomes in the manner they (as customers) would like GBSS to.

It was clearly necessary to address these immediate challenges, since having a successful GBSS strategy was imperative for the future.

It was time to go back to the drawing board and introspect. After several rounds of deliberation, the strategic themes that emerged from this exercise were the need to:

We felt that the logical sequence of things should be to first address matters concerning people so that we can create the right environment and right mind-set for addressing Customer and Process Accountability and Innovation related strategic imperatives. The timing also seemed right as we were already a large team, by then.

I have always believed that the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers and that people flourish when they are praised.

Enhancing Talent Management

In June 2016, we went into execution mode on this theme. We worked on a six-pronged approach to address the Talent Management related strategic priorities:

Specific action steps were created and implemented to target each of the strategic priorities, individually and collectively, such as:

• Identified critical positions for all bands above Team Leader level and successors identified for most of these roles. In parallel, development plans of these successors got created and implemented.
• Monthly Town-hall meetings initiated to share operational results and showcase how the Shared Service Operations were driving business outcomes. Besides this, the forum was also used to share progress reports on current and new process transitions, introduce new GBSS employees, share functional knowledge and several other activities.
• Monthly functional review meetings streamlined, to put in place a defined structure and rigour to the reviews.
• Organized unique training programs for the GBSS team, like:
• A combined program for Order–to-Cash and Procure-to-Pay work-streams, such that the Supply Chain and Finance teams have an end-to-end understanding of the broader work-stream rather than only the processes managed respectively by these teams.
• Transactional to Transformational (T2T) – Through these 6 half-day training modules, the entire shared services team was trained and provided orientation on key concepts like Customer Centricity, Importance of Communication, Planning, Problem Solving, Quality etc. within the context of shared services.
• Increased performance review and development progress review meetings for the leadership team.
• Encouraged job rotations at all levels and created policy guidelines in this regard.
• Actively participated in CSR activities organized in partnership with Piramal Foundation (philanthropic arm of the Piramal Group).
• Several team building and engagement activities started outside the normal working environment to encourage goodwill and social participation.
• All of the above initiatives helped in bringing the team together and in driving employee engagement extensively. This manifested in very healthy engagement scores during our Annual Employee Engagement Surveys.

Customer Centricity & Process Accountability

Alongside the work on People priorities, we simultaneously started working on various other fronts to embed Customer Centricity and Process Accountability within GBSS. By end of FY 2016-17 we had already done a fair bit of work, demonstrated by:

• Hugely improved understanding and appreciation of customer needs through Weekly Operations meetings, Governance & Review meetings, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Surveys and other communication channels (VoC)
• Increased customer experience by mapping each process end-to-end (with clear splits) in partnership with the business and writing clear SOPs for GBSS. Acceptable service levels were also agreed to with the business/ plant teams.
• Tracking key metrics specifically tailored towards company goals. Significant improvements in operational metrics was aimed at, thereby driving key business metrics
• Driving continuous improvement based on insights from customer feedback - from the CSAT Surveys, customer feedback calls, performance review feedback and the various governance meetings
• Increased visibility of the leaderships’ commitment towards establishing high standards in customer service, through town halls, review meetings etc.

Innovation Led Productivity Improvement

At the start of FY 2017-18, GBSS was not only managing Finance & Accounting, but also Supply Chain and Human Resources operations for various plants and offices within the Healthcare business. As the year progressed, the team started looking beyond the Healthcare businesses to expand the shared services reach.

It was imperative that the frontline staff took up a bigger role in managing the existing business and participate actively in the innovation led continuous improvement journey. Up until then, the GBSS leadership team used to front-end all key customer interactions and spearhead all the continuous improvement projects. It now became necessary to empower the frontline team so that they feel confident of addressing day-to-day customer issues without there being a need for leadership escalation.

‘I have the Power’ was therefore conceived as an initiative to institutionalize and fast-track the Employee Empowerment & Innovation objective within GBSS.

Given the significance of the project, a closely monitored governance mechanism was put into place. With this in view:

• Functional or Process Team Leaders were given the responsibility of being ‘Mentors’ to each team, with their roles clearly defined and communicated.
• A committee comprising of Functional/ Business Leads (internal stakeholders/ customer groups) was formed to review the projects ideas and score the same.
• A list of top 18 project ideas to be pursued by the 9 Project teams was created. Each team would thus have a total of 2 projects each – One short term, 10-week project and the other a longer term, 20-week project.
• A strict governance mechanism was put in place to review progress at various levels within the GBSS and beyond. A scoring framework was defined and rewards announced for the best projects and the best teams.

By October 2017, all the 9 teams had successfully completed one project each. This created a huge impact in diverse areas of the business. The projects in brief were:

• Standardized email response to most common customer queries/ communications. This was aimed at delivering uniform customer experience by leveraging standard email templates and would save time by avoiding a need to draft a new email response every time.
• Introduction of P-Cards as a payment solution - for select vendor categories, to ensure timely payment and effectively expand Days-to-Pay
• Digitization of employee personal files – Of 6000+ employees, aimed at saving both costs and effort within the HR and Finance teams.
• Branding & Marketing of GBSS – By developing a GBSS capabilities & achievement program, and creating a structured internal awareness & appreciation drive within our Group.
• Leveraging macros for automating statutory audit schedules – for F&A processes managed by GBSS.
• Policy for availing early payment discounts – from vendors, and a complete set of procedures to be followed for the same.
• Inclusion of shipping bill reference in exports invoices. This also included digitization of relevant documents for every shipment to aid compliance and ease of archival.
• Tracking of purchase orders with bank guarantees within SAP, thereby improving control on a potentially sensitive exposure area.
• Process for timely & correct accounting of late delivery charges – in cases of delayed vendor supplies

The larger ‘I have the Power’ program is already a huge success within the organisation and the Group. The program, though not yet over, has created an enormous amount of positive energy in the teams – in addition to the positives of the projects themselves. The sense of achievement, empowerment and learning is omnipresent within the teams – as is more than evident in a short, quick survey that was carried out right after the completion of the first set of projects.

The project teams are already working on a war-footing towards completion of their 2^nd set of projects, which are longer and larger, aimed at broader areas of impact. These projects, when implemented would have a very positive impact on how we do business and further create the impetus to the team morale.

The design of the larger Talent Management Program has ensured significant improvement in employee empowerment and innovation with the result that now:

One of the Values of Piramal Group is ‘Care’. In keeping with our values and with the Talent Management and Employee Engagements initiatives at GBSS, we are committed to taking care of our employees. Through ‘I have the Power’ initiative, we are working hard towards empowering our employees so that they can take good care of our customers, both internal and external and prove Richard Branson’s words true.

 

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