MARCH 2018

GBS of the future is packed with a lot of action and lots to accomplish
– great potential and great opportunities

FUTURE READY, NOT FUTURE SHOCK

The Agenda for GBS Centres to ‘get set’ for Future Readiness

A Journal of Shared Services Forum

MARCH 2018
A Journal of Shared Services Forum
EDITORIAL BOARD
Sanjay Gupta
Rakesh Sinha
Pallavi Jayaswal
CORPORATE OFFICE
Shared Services Forum
D-75, Malviya Nagar,
New Delhi - 110017, India
Phone: +91-11-2667 4920
www.sharedservicesforum.in
Published, Printed and Owned by
Shared Services Forum
All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part
without written permission from
Shared Services Forum is
prohibited.
Write to us:
contact@sharedservicesforum.in
Sanjay Gupta is the Chief
Architect of Shared
Services Forum. He has
over 32 years of work
experience in the fields of
Management, Business Processes,
Finance and Human Resources.
Sanjay has pioneered & published
several research papers on BPM &
Shared Services and also co - authored
the first ever comprehensive book on
BPM – “BPM in Global India - The
Inflection Point for Competitive
Advantage”. Sanjay is the Executive
Editor of Shared Services Forum’s
Journal, Process Edge and contributes
immensely towards GICs/ Shared
Services/ BPOs by knowledge capture,
sharing and dissemination through
articles, research and creating models
for base lining and growth.
Sanjay divides his time between SSF
activities and consulting for large
corporates. In addition, he provides
English coaching to the underprivileged
children, youth and young adults.
www.sharedservicesforum.in
Editor’s Note
There is so much being said about the world of the future that it has
almost begun to take an ominous place in our minds. The future world
seems to have already overtaken our past world and is almost
competing with the present world in terms of sheer quantity of thought
content. Clearly, advancement is not bad in itself. It is the speed that
seems to have accelerated faster than any single generation can
absorb. The trouble with these crystal-ball-gazing predictions of the
future is that each one of them is hugely disruptive and extremely
technology intensive.
When Alvin Toffler published his famous book Future Shock (1970), he
probably could not even image some of the predictions being talked of
now. It is hard to imagine that humans of the future may have the
option to have a computer chip embedded in their brains, connected to
the outside world at all times. Imagine: no morning alarms needed, in
fact no watches, no hand-held phones, no laptops – just think it and e-
mail it out! Darkly, humans could well become bionic or semi-
computerised, ultimately eliminating the species homo sapiens (Homo
Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari).
Environmental changes will come too. Fashion, food, language, culture
will all globalise rapidly and change the way we think and do business.
Politics, governance, business modelling and management thought will
be very different from what we see today. The world may well become
one big market and each company a global player.
Change in human order is nothing new. Humans have been rapidly
advancing forever. Each passing era must have looked at the future
with some degree of trepidation. Three generations ago the Frenchman
Jules Verne created a world furore with his predictions, causing
enormous amounts of debate, in favour and against. However each one
of his predictions seems to have come true in some form or another.
Advancement is inevitable. We cannot alter it or stop it. We can only
enable and prepare for its arrival. We must discover all we can about
what that world will be like in the future, and try to guide our policies
and actions around that. Preparing for uncertainty raises the question
up from the specific to the general; from workplace skills we can define
today to skills that prepare us for an uncertain range of possible
futures and for steady change.
There is no sure-shot way to make ourselves future-ready. We have to
create a sound learning foundation in such a way that we are well-
informed, skilled in certain areas and flexible. We should be able to
learn, unlearn and relearn with ease. Moreover, social and inter-
personal skills, resilience in the face of adversity and an optimistic
outlook must be developed. It is imperative that we have an
understanding of the unpredictability of tomorrow's world. It is only
then that we can have the will to embrace change.
Algorithms will radically change the world of work. As will microwaves.
This will have a telling impact on how services are carried out in an
integrated corporate world. As business managers our readiness to
take this in our stride will depend on our preparedness to learn,
unlearn and relearn rapidly.
Together, in this edition of Process Edge we will go through a
framework of reducing the shock of an unpredictable future of a
business services organisation by creating ‘ACT’ion now; use the
present to enable the future. In addition, we would also have a ring-
side view of some of the cutting edge IT advancements that are
happening in the world of business services. Hope you enjoy the
journey.
Table of Contents

3 COVER STORY
Future Ready, Not Future Shock
– THE AGENDA FOR GBS CENTRES TO ‘GET SET’ FOR FUTURE
READINESS

14
I Have the Power
LEVERAGING THE POWER OF HIGHLY ENGAGED EMPLOYEES
TO DRIVE CUSTOMER CENTRICITY

18
Become ‘Future Relevant’ by ReShaping the Transformation Strategy
A REPORT ON SSF’s 7th ANNUAL GLOBAL SHARED SERVICES
CONCLAVE 2017

24
Trading on the Edge
USING SUPER COMPUTING TO CATCH THAT ELUSIVE
‘MARKET TIP’

30
The New Age Human Resource
LEVERAGING AI FOR A HIGH-TECH & HIGH-TOUCH
EXPERIENCE

33
Delivering Financial Services Faster & Better
HOW BFSI CAN LEVERAGE AGILE TRANSFORMATION

35
Highlights from the Research Report on ‘Building Capabilities
for Future and Catalyzing Transformation’
TRENDS, PRACTICES & FRAMEWORKS

37
Connected Customer Experience
AN INNOVATIVE CASE OF IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT
TRANSFORMATION

www.sharedservicesforum.in
 COVER STORY

Future Ready, Not Future Shock!

THE AGENDA FOR GBS CENTRES TO ‘GET SET’ FOR FUTURE READINESS
 RAVI S RAMAKRISHNAN

GBS of the future is packed with a lot of action and lots to accomplish
– great potential and great opportunities

“Our greatest motivations in life come from NOT knowing the future.”
— ‘FUTURIST’ Thomas Frey

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 3

 F uturist Thomas Frey says that Business will
change in the next 10 years much more than the
transactional processes to high-end and
analytics processes. Nearly 70% of the GICs are
small scale centres i.e. less than 500 FTEs (see
past two decades, and humanity will change in chart below) of large manufacturing corporations
the next 20 years more than in all of human and mid-size companies.
history. As per Frey, by 2030, the average person
in the US will travel 40% of the time in driverlessWhile the fundamental construct of the GICs has
car, use 3D printer to print hyper individualized been as a ‘cost centre’ of the parent company,
meals, and may be, 50% of today’s Fortune 500 many of the mature GICs, have made efforts to
Companies would have dropped off the list. grow into GBSCs and move up the delivery chain
to become ‘value focused centres.’ However,
Like the tip of the iceberg, the roller coaster GICs are not often run as a ‘business’. Hence,
changes of 2030 are visible in today’s global their future readiness to plan and contribute to
environment through unprecedented forces of parent company’s business is contingent upon
change happening simultaneously in US/UK. the information shared with, or perceptions of

‘
These changes are the HQ, well founded
impacting or otherwise. Given
businesses of
Being future ready should be a business this, today we are truly
several global need of GBSCs. It should not be at the at an ‘inflection point’
corporations and of GBS centres. There
thereby, having a discretion of a directive from Corporate is a need to assess
direct impact on the HQ, especially if the GBS leadership wants and enable how the
Global Business GBS Centres can
Services, the to create the right level of positive impact to become future ready
strategy that was
the parent company and not be negatively now, and refresh to

’
initiated as captive re-align their priorities
centres, two decades impacted by a future shock. with the parent
back. company’s future
business priorities.

Ironically, one clear example in the past that had

the ‘readiness’ to deal with shocks of business
environment was the GBS centre of Lehman
Brothers at Mumbai. In 2008, when the parent
company Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy due
to financial crisis, the tenacity and resilience
demonstrated by the GBS leadership of Lehman
Brothers in India to jump on to the driving seat
and direct their own destiny despite the shock of
the parent company, is really appropriate and
worth a case study by itself.
‘Being future ready’ should be a business need
of GBSCs. It should not be at the discretion of a
directive from Corporate HQ, especially if the
GBS leadership wants to create the right level of
positive impact to the parent company and not
be negatively impacted by a future shock.

Four Forces of Change for GBS to reckon

with:

The GBS Centres need to consciously consider

the impact of Four forces of Change to assess
Offshoring to India is anchored in mid 90s as a
and build their readiness:
pioneering strategy by American Express. It was
based on the early fruits of technology 1. Future of Geo Political & Work Changes,
enablement, as an in-house captive centre, now 2. Future of Business Change,
renamed as Global In-house Centres (GICs). 3. Future of Corporate HQ philosophy on
There has been significant growth over the last Offshoring, and last but not the least,
20 years – 2600+ GICs, 50% in India itself – not 4. Future of Technology
only in number of FTEs but also from low-end

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 4

Each of the above will have a direct impact on
GBSC but the impact could vary from one
business domain to another. Consequently, the
strategic posture will have to be relevant for the
Chart 1
1. Future of Geo Political & Work Changes
a) The certainty once associated with
globalization has suddenly come into
question with Brexit, the Philippines,
Netherlands and France, and of course,
US. The interdependence of countries,
now a fact of global life, is not matched by
strengthening global governance.
However, there is an expectation that
political and corporate leaders will engage
together in the development of what is
called ‘human rights ecosystem’.
b) Economic power and political power will
increasingly shift to Asia - China in
particular, and India to a large extent.
Africa, with its lowest median age in 2030
(21 years) as compared to Europe (45
years), will have the demographic dividend
shifted from India.
c) The retirement age will go up to 67 years,
with higher life expectancy. Population of
millennials will reach a peak by 2030. Liz
Bentley says that 50% of occupations that
exist today will not exist 10 years from
now.
d) The age of anonymity or even privacy is
getting over, directly impacting the social
fabric of the people across the globe.
domain they belong to and the responses need
to be appropriately incorporated into their future
readiness. The key change elements under each
force are captured in Chart 1 for brevity and
focus:
2. Future of Business
a) Fortunes are ever changing! As already
mentioned, 50% of today’s Fortune 500
might have changed by 2030. A good
indicator of the past experience of
business is that 7% of the Fortune 100 in
2007 do not appear in the Fortune 500 of
2017; only 12% of the Fortune 500
companies in 1955 remained Fortune 500
in 2016, and 50% change happened
between 2000 and 2016 - thanks to digital
transformation. Out of many, there are
several oft quoted examples such as
Lehman Brothers, Kodak, Blockbuster,
Sears and the like.
b) Industries change in different ways. An
HBR article summarizes that Industries
evolve and change over distinct
trajectories – radical, progressive, creative
and intermediating, across two
dimensions – core activities that generate
profits and core assets that represent the
resources, knowledge and brand that have
made the organization unique.
c) The key highlight to focus between
Business & Technology is, for the same
technology, the business impact varies
very differently for different businesses.
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 5
 For example, IoT is transforming six
industries – Agriculture, Healthcare,
Retail, Transportation & Logistics, Utility
and Manufacturing – very differently, and
the challenges of one business like
Agriculture varies from the challenges for
the other, like Manufacturing.
d) In the business world, demand is
increasing for a new, trustworthy source
of information on tax and regulatory
changes worldwide, to drive global as well
as local decisions, through effective use
of the advanced technologies. On the
same count, hence, Digital Ethics will be
key to risk management.
‘
3. Considerations of Corporate HQ on GBS
a) The expectations of Pioneering leaders of GBS like 4. Future of Technology
corporate HQ from
GBS are changing and American Express, P&G etc., have
the Net Promoter
Score (NPS) of GBSCs
always set the goal for the GBS to
is not very become truly a strategic asset for the
encouraging. As per
the Bain - NASSCOM parent company.
a) 2017 study of India GICs, NPS is at a low
of only 17%. While this is an external
report, many GBSCs do not take VoC from
their internal customers. Hence, they are
mostly unaware of the NPS. Despite being
closest to the business, one particular
reason of HQ’s perception of low
performance of GBS is ‘domain know-
how’. This requires substantial effort from
GBS to make a difference in the future.
b) Leadership change at the HQ for GBS or
even at the Parent Company CEO level,
has a direct bearing on the future and
strategies of GBS. A good example is
Aviva Global Services. It started off as a
model BOT structure with 3 vendor
partners and 6 centres. With a change in
top leadership, it became a pure
outsourcing operation, after 3 years of
BOT Operations.
c) GBS is seen as an extension of business
of the parent company. While one
welcomes this construct from GBS value
creation/ business point of view, it has a
few downsides to it that affects the very
DNA of the GBS. Firstly, this is the key
reason for GBSCs to be looked at as a
cost centre. This approach leads to
inherently higher costs. The comparison is
often with what is prevailing in the parent
company and not with what is prevailing
in market place competition (like BPO
majors). Second, by design GBS is
financially managed by cost budgets and
not by profitability of a business. Value
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 6
delivery is also not properly measured in a
‘demonstrable’ manner.
a) Pioneering leaders of GBS like American
Express, P&G etc., have always set the
goal for the GBS to become truly a
strategic asset for the parent company.
Strategic Asset is a specific set of core
capabilities and resources that an
organization possesses. They provide the
organisation a significant and unique
competitive edge to sustain its future
outcomes and continue to grow and
prosper. This continues to be a dream for
many of the GBSCs, as the strategic
connect is relatively lower as compared to
the expectations of Corporate HQ.
All changes from the
forces of geopolitical,
social and business
have a strong connect
’
with technology, and
hence, it is needless to
over emphasize the
pervasive and rapid change happening due to
technology.
a) As per Pemberton Levy of Gartner, in
2030, ‘things’ will dominate, having grown
exponentially. As every product, service
and process becomes digitalized, the
product ‘cloud’ will become more valuable
than the product itself. Competitors will
continue to challenge industry boundaries
and traditional business models. With IoT
and with more than 50% population having
internet access, the demands for internet
connectivity will substantially go up. In
short, digitalization will make the world an
even smaller place. With billions of
connected devices and things, the
business will move beyond Big Data to
Algorithms. Obviously, an increasing
portion of the workforce will not be
human.
b) Technology will impact the people in GBS
substantially. It will make finding the right
talent easier and reduce unintentional
bias. Employees will be analysed in
unprecedented detail and in real time, to
ensure they are effective and happy.
Mobile banking will transform the lives of
people from emerging countries and will
be more ‘empathetic’, thanks to virtual
reality. Besides the people skills, data
science, forecasting skills and the ability
to design and tweak algorithms will be
even more essential.
c) While there is so much talk about New intent of innovation, and allow the low end
Age IT, there is another dimension to the processes to continue to remain
technology: legacy platforms as well as outsourced. However, if insourcing is done

‘
multiplicity of applications. due to high cost-to-serve, then the
Many large approach is
organizations deal with The mantra that will be used for inappropriate. Any IT
as many as 2000+ work that is routine
applications and bulk
achieving future readiness is ACT – and transactional
of them are not digital Assess Readiness, Connect Readiness can remain
ready. Companies outsourced – but at a
clinging to out-dated and Target Readiness i.e. ACT now

applications eventually for Future Readiness.
run into a problem.
BlackBerry, Blockbuster and Kodak are
good examples. CXOs are keen to get this
sorted out in the next few years, so that
the Old Age IT does not become an
‘albatross around their neck.’ This will call
for disproportionate effort to prioritize and
change, while there is continued focus on
modernizing IT.
d) In the last couple of years, many large
BFSI & retail companies have started
‘insourcing’ technology after having
outsourced, with the intent to create
strategic focus towards New Age IT. While
the strategic intent to insource
outsourced processes is well justified, this
could be a big change for both GBS and
corporate HQ. If not managed well, this
can put the corporation back by few years
in terms of GBS. This needs to be carried
out carefully and in a structured manner.
Instead of insourcing all outsourced
processes, there is a need to segregate
the high end processes that require
insourcing as they serve the strategic
’
lower cost – by inviting
fresh RFPs, as
required, for award of
the new contracts. The GBS, besides the
parent company, needs to be in the
forefront to make such insourcing
decisions meaningful with strategic
analysis backing such a decision.
‘Getting Set’ for Future Readiness
The change elements under the four forces of
change are by no means exhaustive. They are
only highlighting the extent of change possible
or happening – few within our control or
influence, and many beyond our control.
However, it is abundantly clear that GBSCs and
GICs need to ‘get set’ for future readiness from
TODAY, if they are keen to proactively shape
their own destiny. There are SEVEN tracks that
need to be worked upon to progress towards the
goal of Future Readiness. These form the ‘Seven
Tracks of Highly Effective & Future Ready GBS.
Each of these SEVEN Tracks of ACT has
‘Assess’, ‘Connect’ and ‘Target’ parameters to
follow for enabling future readiness, as
captured in Chart 2.

Chart 2

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 7

 The ‘Call to Action’ is immediate and we need to
categorize the actions with a view to eventually
target future readiness. One action may address
issues under more than one force of change and
hence, the actions need to be considered
This way of working is insufficient for
benchmarking, as external information available
is always FLC/FTE. Similarly, Value Delivery by
the GBS is to be established covering savings,
risk mitigants and revenue impact. This

‘
holistically and a framework drawn up Assessment enables to identify the opportunities
accordingly. for cost reduction as
Let us look at these As it evolves, it could be that the future of well as areas to mine
briefly. The mantra Global Business Services could well and deliver value for

’
that will be used for the business.
achieving future determine the future of the Business itself.
readiness is ACT – Assess Readiness,
Post this assessment, the Connect Stage is
Connect Readiness and Target Readiness i.e.
ACT now for Future Readiness.
C
to progress towards GBS as a business,
and surely not remain as a cost centre or even a
ACT 1 – Benchmarking Cost to Business value-focused centre. This is an important
Benchmarking of Cost & Value Delivery in milestone for future readiness. This will require
A the Assess Stage is the fundamental establishing the costs and revenues of GBS as a
starting point to the journey of getting future business through a simple charge-out
ready with a meaningful dollar metric that mechanism along with value of net assets
connects GBS not only within the parent deployed in setting up and running of GBS. This
company but also with the comparable external will provide the ROI of GBS and give a real
market environment in terms of a sustainable momentum for the GBS to look for opportunities
value story. Benchmarking of cost needs to to re-allocate resources as per parent company
cover Fully Loaded Cost per FTE (FLC/FTE) – priorities. As of now only about 10% of the
including direct and indirect costs. HQ allocated GBSCs actually report as a business, since the
costs are also to be included, while determining general belief is that GBS is an extension of the
the FLC/FTE. Many of the GBSCs report the parent’s core business.
Budget vs. Actual for Total Direct Costs and not The Target Stage of Enterprise Services as
the FLC and do not always establish the T
a business, fully aligned to parent
FLC/FTE. company’s priorities is what makes the GBS
P&G GBS: Getting Future Ready through NGS - A Case Study*
Procter & Gamble has been the Global Business Services industry’s poster child. Their GBS Model is mature
delivering to a global strategy. Two years back, the GBS Leadership believed that the key to unlocking the next
stage of value-add lies in ‘leveraging exponential technology disruptors to redefine work processes’, and
reimagine GBS service delivery to enable digital business model for the enterprise. In partnership with
Singularity, P&G’s GBS set up its own ‘collaborative laboratory’ via a new Next Generation Services (NGS)
team, and tapped into the best resources for exponential technology.
The team launched a three-stakeholder group approach to moving forward:
 Exponential Work Processes, represented by each of its service lines
 Exponential Technologies, represented by the top few IT & Shared Services providers and
 Exponential Ecosystem, represented by 200 external start-ups and venture capitalists.
Over 2 years, this group worked on new generation capabilities, starting with a clean sheet of paper, without
being limited by traditional work processes or out-dated thinking. They built the enterprise strategy on
customer experience, and were careful not to be misled by mere technology innovations. The result was in
three-parts:
Exponential Processes: Through Outcome Based Processes with trust & control (data algorithms to approve
expense reports)
Exponential Technologies: Through Total Automation with IoT, Machine Learning, AI & RPA, redefining scale
from scarcity to abundance
Exponential Ecosystem: Through Human Capital on Demand by crowd sourcing, and dissolving organizational
boundaries by platforms across the organization (like LinkedIn/Airbnb driving new business models)
The projects were characterized by high risk/high return, with 10x improvements instead of the usual 20 to
30%. The thought was that even if 2 out of 10 projects would be successful, the benefits would far exceed the
investments because of the disruption it would drive. More than the tools, the end goal was driving the NGS
strategy. Companies like P&G are embracing disruption as a game-changer - from its products to its services -
demonstrating their future readiness.
*Summarized from the Published Interview of Tony Saldanha

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 8

become truly future ready. Here, the approach is
inverted – where the GBS prepares its Strategic
Plan based on the parent company’s priorities
and challenges and proactively allocates
resources towards fulfilment of those
requirements. Procter & Gamble GBS is a good
case in point for reference, which has already
reached the Target stage of ‘Future Ready’ (See
‘
Case Study).
As it evolves, it could be Voice of Customer and Delivery
that the future of Global Excellence is an excellent combination
Business Services could
to align what GBS thinks of its
well determine the future
of the Business itself.
delivery with what the customers
ACT 2 – Customer Excellence
perceive they are getting.
Voice of Customer and Delivery Excellence
A is an excellent combination to align what
GBS thinks of its delivery with what the
customers perceive they are getting. In our
interactions with GBSCs, we have seen
organizations do not carry out regular or
periodic VoCs with their HQ as there is a belief
that both belong to the same company. Or, GBS
may believe that they are moving up the maturity
curve in terms of Delivery Excellence, but do not
validate this with their internal customers. Both
are not good practices for an effective GBS
operations. Hence, this is the best place to start
for Assess Stage as there is always a ‘gap or
disconnect’ between GBS and the key
stakeholders. This can also establish the Net
Promoter Score (NPS) for the GBS.
Post the Assess Stage, the Connect Stage
C enables action on ways and means to
increase the NPS. This stage ensures an
alignment of Delivery Excellence with Customer
Expectations, implements a structured process
for customer engagement with business and
service functional heads to understand and
deliver on the critical customer journeys.
T An effective NPS helps progress towards
Customer Experience Management (CEM) –
the Target Stage. Quite often, GBSCs tend to
use the concept of CEM without even having a
proper VoC, Delivery Excellence validation, or a
customer engagement program. The sequential
focus on CEM in the Target Stage will, therefore,
provide solid credibility to connect with internal
customers and even external customers, jointly
with the internal customers.
ACT 2 is a key track that connects ACT 1 of GBS
or ES as a Business to sustain collaboration with
customers, built on a strong business
orientation.
ACT 3 – Core Business Expertise
In the history of two decades of offshoring, GICs
and GBSCs, the domain expertise is an
expectation that GBSCs always seen to be
falling short of. For the sake of clarity, Domain
Business refers to the Core Business of the
parent company – be it, Insurance or Fast
Moving Consumer Goods. Without this
anchoring track, being
future ready would remain
a myth.
The Assess Stage is
A to understand the
’
current state of domain
knowledge across GBS
population, at Prelim,
Intermediate and Advanced levels,
corresponding to the roles and leadership.
GBSCs need to have domain focus on the
industry and not just the parent company. They
should extend their analysis to parent company’s
competition as well (in all forms – traditional and
emerging) and the way customers are serviced
by others (strategic triangle of company,
competition and customer). They should then
plan and establish a robust Domain Expertise
Development Centre with faculty from parent
company, Train-the-Trainer for domain
knowledge, assessments tests to certify the
levels of completion, and metrics to monitor
domain expertise development at the GBSC. All
of this should then be reported periodically to
the key customers of the parent company.
Technology, being all pervasive to all
businesses, the domain expertise is the
foundation to leverage this power for business.
The domain expertise focus leads to the
C Connect Stage of creating a Next Gen
Services (NGS) Hub within GBS to identify
projects to leverage domain knowledge with new
workplace processes and technologies.
NGS provides the right platform to go to the
T Target Stage of delivering value by linking
technology with business growth. This is a long
haul activity and requires urgent attention of all
GBSs who are serious in getting future ready, as
shown in the P&G case study.
ACTs 1 to 3, taken together, will really provide
the much-talked-about-but-often-never-realized
‘seat at the table’ for the GBS lead with the
Business Leaders of the parent company.
Without these ACTs, seat at the table will
remain just a good talking point and never
happen.
ACT 4 – Operating Models
GICs, by design, are In-house and fall under the
Captive Operating Model.
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 9
 However, GBSCs need to go beyond captive
operations to encompass managing many
operating models as appropriate to its business
process value chain, and fit to the corporate
philosophy. Quite often, outsourcing happens in
parallel to GIC or GBS Ops, without a direct link
to GBS. This is sub-optimal from the overall
business points of view. Also sometimes, the
corporate philosophy mandates creating only
‘captive’ GICs even when alternative models may
be more effective to get the best out of the BPM
ecosystem. Whichever operating model is
adopted, there is a need to pin the delivery
accountability on the provider, and not pass this
on to the parent company.
Hence, at the Assess Stage, it is necessary
A to establish the Process Value Chain for the
operations residing within GBS – be it, captive or
third party and carry out a zero base review to
determine which operating model is more
suitable. This can also lead to a situation where
the Shared Services in one location can be spun
off to a third party with relevant expertise; or
pulling back some from the outsourced
operations to in-house model. A Sourcing
Management Office (SMO) with internal
leadership and external experts can be a good
way to initiate and monitor this. The SMO can
review and reimagine the operating models from
a clean slate and take the necessary step
forward to the Connect Stage action.
Besides the Captive and Third Party
C operating models, there are innovative
solutions and models that have come up like
‘Dedicated Captive’ (DCap) where the centre
provides exclusive services to GBS or if there is
no GBS, to the parent company. This is not a
virtual captive which BPOs have carried out in
the past. The DCap model provides the right
blend of In-house flexibility, exclusivity of people
and operations and control with minimum
investment enable setting up operations with
best business process expertise, and as a
business. This innovation comes from the best
practices of manufacturing space, where sub-
contracting has been successfully adopted and
is an unbeatable combination for corporations
seeking to have control with delivery excellence.
The crux to future readiness is for the GBS
T to have ‘end-to-end accountability’ with
hybrid operating models, which is the Target
State. Without this, there is no way the next
level movement on the overall effectiveness or
future readiness can be achieved.
ACT 5 – Capability Development
Capability Development (CD) is another phrase
that is much talked about but not adequately
measured in GBS Quite often it is linked in a
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 10
limited way to Leadership & Skill Development.
In reality, this term is all encompassing and
covers Knowledge Management, Innovation,
Performance, Contracting, and Intellectual
Property to name a few.
Practically for sustaining future readiness,
A CD is an important ACT and needs a
structured approach. For this, there is no model
better than eSourcing Capability Model (eSCM),
developed by the Carnegie Mellon University
and now managed by the ITSqc. eSCM is a great
way to start the Assess Stage of ACT 5 and
benchmark to get a holistic view of multiple
aspects of capabilities. eSCM covers 10
capabilities, 84 best practices and about 700 sub
practices, with focus on CAPA (Corrective
Action, Preventive Action), process capability
base-lining, service design, relationship
management etc.
Based on this Assess output, actions are
C prioritized from the company point of view
for the Connect Stage towards Organizational
Capability Development (OCD) covering all the
10 capabilities in a holistic manner. It covers
multiple dimensions like digital culture, process
capability enhancement to adopt technology,
process candidates for digital technology, digital
execution assessment, etc.
Given the impact technology change has on
T all aspects of GBS, OCD is the spring board
for Digital Execution in the Target Stage. By
design, Digital Execution is ‘holistic’, and NOT
just limited to technology. This is also the
foundation for Exponential Technologies under
ACT 7 covering digital aspects like AI, IoT, AR,
VR, etc.
ACT 6 – Work Place Environment
This is one area where unexpected changes
A are still happening. The Assess Stage will
aim to identify key skills like intrapreneurship,
design thinking, commercial acumen, basics of
data science, and everything that is connected
with changing work place or place of work.
Built on this, the GBS will work to ensure
C development of Workplace Management
skills under the Connect Stage for employees at
various levels. One important requirement will
be for people to ‘manage not just other people
but also bots’. In addition, the abilities to
manage hybrid models, big data analytics, open
ecosystem of tools available for various
processes, business intelligence, business
partnership etc. will sustain the various actions
taken under all ACTs.
With this, the Target Stage is to get ready
T with workplace leadership skills that are
crucial to create a talent hub and focus on

multiple dimensions of new age requirements
like NGS, reimagining work processes using
exponential technologies, exponential
ecosystem, etc.,. Global In-house Centres then
truly become Global Capability Centres of and
Combining the power of digital ready IT, the
T
landing point as a Target is the Exponential
Technologies that covers AR, VR, AI beyond RPA
and other automation areas. Quite often, GBSCs
jump straight to advanced technologies without

‘
for the parent company’s business. having established the Target Readiness on
other ACTs as
ACTs 4 to 6 together Every GBS which can embark on this outlined here.
ensure that GBS is
Connect and Target
able to leverage the highway of 7 Tracks for future readiness can
Stage readiness in
seat at the table truly become a strategic asset and a valuable

achieved from ACTs
line of business for the parent company. .
1 to 3 and drive its
own destiny’ for GBS to make a difference to
the parent company and key stakeholders. This
ensures alignment of all GBS strategic actions
to deliver on the corporate HQ and business/
services priorities.
ACT 7 – Technology Focus
This ACT, as already seen, is the pivot on
A which the future of GBS lies. The Assess
Stage is obviously a focus on IT landscape of
what is within the company, what kind of
innovation is happening outside, and what
changes are being implemented as of now.
Identifying process candidates for RPA and
initiating some pilots can be part of Assess
stage to plan the big step forward.
Based on the IT landscape, a project with
C all stakeholders needs to be created to
mitigate the miseries of traditional IT or legacy
IT and work closely to enable traditional IT
digital ready. The GBSCs should also aim at
reducing cost on traditional IT and funnelling
investments for future technologies – since this
is a high priority for the CIO and the Business
Leaders. This is easier said than done, but is
inescapable as it provides the cutting edge to
the GBS to become future ready in the eyes of
the parent company and other stakeholders – in
particular its own employees. Implementation of
RPA and adopting AI could be growing as part of
this stage, but a dominant focus on making
traditional IT digital is a must in Connect stage,
if GBS wants to showcase its Capabilities of
providing Technology edge to parent company.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
’
ACT 1 to 6 will make
the future readiness
in technology a
positive experience, with a smooth and soft
landing.
ACT 7 on technology is all encompassing,
impacting the other six tracks – ACTs 1 to 6. It
has a virtual cycle effect on enhancing the
power and outcomes from the other ACTs.
Way Forward
GBS of the future is packed with a lot of action
and lots to accomplish – great potential and
great opportunities.
ACTs 1 to 7 as a framework has been built on
learning from GBSCs and the current
assessment of the future. The sequence from
ACTs 1 to 7 is to go from Assess Stage of ACT 1
to Assess Stage of ACT 7 and then navigate the
journey forward to Connect and Target, as each
track gains sponsorship, engagement,
momentum and results. With fair degree of
conviction, one can claim that these tracks will
truly become the 7 Tracks of Highly Effective
and Future Ready GBSCs.
Every GBS which can embark on this highway of
7 Tracks for future readiness can truly become a
strategic asset and a valuable line of business
for the parent company. Also, when converted
into a reality, the GBSCs will have the enviable
combination of bringing the advantages of both
profitability and end-to-end process
perspectives for the success and growth of the
core business. PE

Ravi S Ramakrishnan is a seasoned business and people leader with invaluable

experience of 35 years in finance, business and business process areas. He was
instrumental in setting up the pioneering global offshoring operations at American
Express. Having held leadership positions earlier in Hindustan Unilever, Murugappa
Group and Eicher with CXO level responsibilities,
Ravi is recognized as a thought leader in off shoring and business process domains.
He uniquely combines exposure to multiple sectors of Indian and global corporations,
and drives the vision and strategies for growth of RvaluE in the niche area of
business process services through a team of professionals. Ravi is a Chartered &
Cost Accountant and a Company Secretary.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 11

 I Have the Power
LEVERAGING THE POWER OF HIGHLY ENGAGED EMPLOYEES TO DRIVE
CUSTOMER CENTRICITY
 NARENDRRA V ARORA

R , “I have always believed that the way you

said
ichard Branson, Founder Virgin Atlantic,
On the other hand, the internal customers were
perhaps, beginning to believe that the GBSS
team took a very narrow process view, without
treat your employees is the way they will treat
an end-to-end outlook on the composite value
your customers and that people flourish when
chain/ work-stream. They felt that the GBSS
they are praised.” In many ways what he said,
team does not take accountability for business
sums up our experiences as well, with talent
outcomes in the manner they (as customers)
management and customer centricity.
would like GBSS to.
In February 2016, almost one and half years into It was clearly necessary to address these
the Phase One of deployment of Shared Services immediate challenges, since having a successful
Operating Model within Piramal

‘
GBSS strategy was imperative for the future. It
Enterprises Ltd’s It was time to go back
Healthcare businesses, I have always believed that the way to the drawing board
while the completion of and introspect. After
planned process you treat your employees is the way several rounds of
transitions was very they will treat your customers and that deliberation, the

’
much in sight, an strategic themes that
obvious question people flourish when they are praised. emerged from this
bothering us was what’s exercise were the
next? With an able team at the helm & strong need to:
leadership support at all levels, the Global
Business Shared Services (GBSS) team had
been able to manage systematic process Enhance Talent
transitions and achieve rapid process Management with Build a Customer
stabilization. sharp focus on Centric
Employee Organization
However for the moment, the larger questions Engagement
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
Create an
Piramal Group so that they too can reap the
Improve Process Innovation led
benefits of this successfully running operating
Accountability & Productivity
model of Healthcare Division. Execution focus Improvement
Within the GBSS, one could already see some of Environment
the challenges that lay ahead, like:
 Process/ Operations teams operating in silos,
 Inability of the GBSS team to appreciate We felt that the logical sequence of things
beneficiary Business Units/ employees as should be to first address matters concerning
(internal) customers rather than colleagues; people so that we can create the right
and environment and right mind-set for addressing
 Poor communication with the customers, Customer and Process Accountability and
including delays and, at times, failure to Innovation related strategic imperatives. The
respond to incoming customer emails/ timing also seemed right as we were already a
queries/ complaints. large team, by then.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 14

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:
Targeted Hiring for Right Skillsets
Succession Planning for Key
Positions
Career & Development Planning
Domain Specific/ Functional and
Behavioural Training
Effective Employee Communication
Drive Employee Engagement
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
Summary results of Annual Employee Engagement Survey
Positive absolute differences vs. benchmark scores (cells with green/ dark green background) denote better than
benchmark scores
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.
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 15
 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
townhalls, 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.
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 16
It was designed as a time bound program where
nine cross-functional teams comprising of
frontline staff (without people management
responsibility) worked on two big impact
projects each - which should positively impact:
Operational Efficiency
Employee Productivity
Cost of Operations
Revenue
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
- the Larger GBSS team has a platform where
managed by GBSS. they get to interact with the senior leadership
▶ Policy for availing early payment discounts – team of the company and gain from their
from vendors, and a complete set of perspectives;
procedures to be followed for the same.
▶ Inclusion of shipping bill reference in exports
invoices. This also included digitization of
- our cross-
relevant documents for every shipment to aid functional learning
compliance and ease of archival. process is on a fast
▶ Tracking of purchase orders with bank track;
guarantees within SAP, thereby improving
control on a potentially sensitive exposure
area.
- leadership skills of the Team Members &
▶ Process for timely & correct accounting of Team Leaders are getting tested and honed as
late delivery charges – in cases of delayed they get to interact with customers directly,
vendor supplies thus helping us identify future leaders and
build a robust leadership pipeline
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 - some GBSS leadership
bandwidth could be released
positive energy in the teams – in addition to the and leadership team could
positives of the projects themselves. The sense focus on new businesses;
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 - team bonding and bonhomie in the team
projects. is distinctly visible

The project teams are already working on a war-

footing towards completion of their 2nd 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. PE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Narendrra V Arora has over 22 years of experience in various areas of Finance &
Accounting spanning diverse industries in multi-cultural settings, and managing
Shared Services operations of which ~9 years have been in Country CFO/Controller
roles.
He has led numerous initiatives to improve operations, impact business growth &
maximize profits through achievements in finance management, cost reductions &
internal control. Narendrra has also led several productivity improvement initiatives
through best practices benchmarking, waste elimination and continuous process
improvements thereby favourably impacting bottom-lines. He is a qualified CA, CS,
ACCA and CWA and has earlier Worked with companies like Johnson & Johnson,
Thermo Fisher Scientific, Owens Corning, Publicis Groupe & OCS Group. He is
currently Vice President , Global Business Shared Services at Piramal Enterprises
Limited.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 17

 Become ‘Future Relevant’ by ReShaping the
Transformation Strategy
A REPORT ON SSF’s 7th ANNUAL GLOBAL SHARED SERVICES CONCLAVE 2017
 TEAM SSF
Shared Services Forum, India felicitated Mr Priyan Fernando, Former Executive Vice President, Global
Business Services of American Express as the PIONEERING BUSINESS LEADER FOR GLOBAL SHARED
SERVICES and Ms Shyama A Bijapurkar, Former Global Shared Services Head at BA Continuum, HSBC
and American Express as BPM ACHIEVER IN GLOBAL INDIA.
S hared Services Forum (SSF) India, along
with RvaluE, the leading Business Process
Management (BPM) & Shared Services
Consulting organization, as Knowledge Partner
organized the Global Shared Services Conclave,
7th year in succession, on November, 24, 2017 at
Le Meridien, New Delhi.
The theme of this 7th edition of SSF’s Annual
Conclave was:
ReSHAPING THE TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY
What Triggers? What Matters? What Next?
The Conclave was attended by 120+ senior
executives and veterans from across India, with
very eminent industry leaders as Speakers and
case presentations.
The Guest of Honour at the event, Shri Sameep
Shastri, Member, Governing Body, BRICS
Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Member
Bhartiya Janta Party, and grandson of former
Prime Minister of India Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri,
applauded the initiative of the Shared Services
Forum of bringing together the leaders of the
Industry on one platform to deliberate and provide
their insights towards building and contributing to
the growth of the Indian Economy, create
employment and effectively encounter the
challenges thrown up by a rapidly changing world.
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 18
“Shri Narendra Modi’s government is very
progressively working towards bringing the
digital transformation in India across sectors
and I personally believe that Shared Services
Forum is tremendously supporting in that
journey of reshaping of Indian economy” said
Shri Shastri.
The context of the day-long event was set by
Mr Ravi S Ramakrishnan, Founder of Shared
Services Forum (SSF) through his Welcome Note.
He talked about the key objective of the day,
“Why it is ‘must’ for all of us to take a pause,
step back and think about ‘the need of
continuously Reshaping the Transformation
Strategy’ to effectively make organizations
‘future relevant’ by embracing rapid changes of
the digital world, higher customer demands/
expectations and drive value delivery & value
innovation”, said Mr Ramakrishnan. For
inauguration session, he was joined by President
of Shared Services Forum, Mr Sunil Sayal,
Regional CFO – India, Nokia Solutions &
Networks, Mr Ram Ramsundar esteemed
member of the SSF Excellence awards Jury Panel
and Former Managing Director, Blue River Capital
and Mr Rakesh Sinha, Co-Founder, Shared
Services Forum.
Release of SSF Publications
Continuing with its objective to seamlessly
disseminate knowledge, Shared Services Forum
released two publications on this occasion. Both
the publications were unveiled by Shri Sameep
Shastri, Mr Ram Ramasundar, Mr Ravi S
Ramakrishnan and Mr Rakesh Sinha.
A Research Report on ‘Building Capabilities for
the Future and Catalyzing Transformation –
Trends, Practices and Frameworks’, prepared
by SSF in collaboration with Everest Group, was
unveiled. The first copy of Report was presented
to Mr Ashish Sehdev, Senior Director - Strategic
Financial Planning, Everest Group
The November 2017 edition of Shared Services
Forum’s Journal, Process Edge, titled,
Demystifying DxQ – Executing Digital
Transformation, was also released on this day.
The articles of this publication have been
authored by some of the leading professionals in
the Shared Services space. They have shared
their successful Shared Services trajectories,
best-practices, innovations and benchmarks along
with the challenges faced, the out-of-the-box
solutions and the excellence achieved. A must
read for all Shared Services professionals at any
stage of the implementation, whether initial
adoption or the next level transformation.
SSF Excellence Awards, Felicitations and
Recognition
SSF, in collaboration with its Knowledge Partner
RvaluE, has instituted Shared Services Excellence
Awards, Recognitions & Felicitations.
Shared Services Excellence awards are designed
to recognize contributions by Companies &
Individuals that are broadly comparable. These
are poised to become the benchmark for
organizations to adopt the Shared Services
Strategy.
These awards were established to honor,
recognize and promote transformative strategies
by Shared Services demonstrating winning
practices. The 7th Annual Global Shared
Services Excellence Awards, Recognition and
Felicitations were conferred to the following
leaders and organisations:
Mr Priyan Fernando was felicitated as the
PIONEERING BUSINESS LEADER FOR GLOBAL
SHARED SERVICES, for his Creativity & Leading
Global Shared Services and Enterprise-wide
Transformation Mission, delivering Value and
Impact to Business, Industry & Society. .
In his Acceptance message, Mr Fernando said
“setting up of Shared Services in an
organization can be done only with
uncompromising grit and integrity” to
challenge what he calls as “a series of
interruptions, interrupted by interventions…”
He recognised the footprints of all those
professionals and leaders who have shaped the
Shared Services Industry to what it is today, and
declared that “Shared Services was pivotal to
transformation and winning in the market
place.” He recognized the work of the Shared
Services Forum (SSF), in the creation of the
“fraternity of leaders in the shared services
space who are driving accountability for the
highest levels of integrity and professionalism
that defines our Industry.”
In his most recent position as Executive Vice
President, Global Business Services of American
Express, he was responsible for all internal
servicing of this $32 billion Payments and
Services Company with presence in over 130
markets. This GBS, which Priyan built from the
ground up, today delivers all financial,
procurement, real estate, human resources and
business transformation support across the entire
American Express enterprise, is incomparable in
its level of excellence and has sown the seeds of
innovation for many Shared Services
Organizations.
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 19
 SSF also felicitated Ms Shyama A Bijapurkar,
posthumously, as the BPM ACHIEVER IN
GLOBAL INDIA, in Recognition of her Stellar
Contribution in a Transformational, Strategic
Leadership and Operations Role, in Global India
delivering Value and Business Impact. She had
over 30 years of work experience in Banking,
Financial Services and Business Services in large
corporations and was key to the successful
establishment and management of Global Finance Syngenta Services for Delivering Business
Centres at American Express, HSBC and Bank of Impact through Technology Transformation
America, before she passed away in September
2017.
An incredible person with exemplary
conviction, accomplishments and
amazing sense of purpose,
Ms Bijapurkar is a
Role Model for
many, as she faced
challenges,
Principal Global Services for Delivering Business
professionally and
Impact by Deploying Innovative People Practices
personally, with a
smile on her face.

Her husband, Mr Ajoy Bijapurkar, received the

Award on her behalf. The award was presented by
Dr BBL Madhukar, Director General, BRICS
Chamber of Commerce & Industry, on behalf of
SSF.
Unilever Industries for Delivering Business Impact by
Following are the organizations which were Moving up the Process Value Chain
awarded and recognized for excellence:

Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages for Delivering Business

Olam International for Shared Services in India Impact by Exemplary Customer Experience Management
(Servicing Overseas Markets)
Vodafone Shared Services India for Delivering
Business Impact through Process Excellence

Essel Business Excellence Services – Essel Group for Intelenet Global Services for Business Process
Shared Services in India (Servicing India Market) Transformation for a Client by BPO

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 20


Raymond – Lifestyle Business Recognized for
Effective Shared Services Implementation in India
Panel Discussions and Case Presentations
The day’s first panel session was the CXO
Interaction that deliberated on the Imperatives for
Reshaping the Transformation Strategy. The
eminent panelists, Mr T Chandrasekar, Vice
President – Finance & CFO, IBM India / South
Asia, Mr V Ganesh, CEO, Karvy Computershare
and Mr Bibek Agarwala, CFO – Lifestyle
Business, Raymond, shared their perspectives
with the audience on connecting New age
Customer Demands and Experience, achieving
higher Digital Quotient, leveraging Transformation
Strategy to drive Higher Performance, Capacity
Building and Enhanced Predictability, striking the
right balance between Talent Management,
Employee Experience and Customer Experience.
The discussion was brilliantly moderated by
Mr Ravi S Ramakrishnan, who kept the focus of
the panel on deliberations on matters critical to
organizations shaping their Transformation
Strategy.
The next
presentation of the
day was made by
another eminent
leader of the
Industry, Mr Nitin
Sahni, Director -
Corporate Services,
Intelenet Global,
who shared his
thoughts around Transforming Business Services
through Embracing Intelligent Automation and
Cognitive Digital Workforce.
The second panel session powerfully deliberated
and presented their cases on another trending
topic of the Industry today – Transformational
Strategies for value delivery and value innovation.
They shared with the audience the strategies for
Driving Value Creation and Innovation much
beyond Cost Arbitrage, Reorganizing/
Restructuring Shared Services Operations to
support Transformational Strategies, Balancing
between Legacy Technology Infrastructure and
embracing Robotics – Why and How, and Moving
Up the Partnership value chain to become
Enterprise Partner.
The panel was moderated by Mr Narayanan
Subramanyam, Chief Information Architect,
RvaluE Group. The eminent speakers who
presented their cases were Mr LG Moorthy,
Senior Vice President & Global Head – GBS, Olam
International Limited, Mr Sanjeev Rastogi, Head
GDC & Regional Head SBS APAC, Syngenta
Services, and Mr Kaushik Majumdar, Managing
Director, Principal Global Services.
Post lunch, the Audience
were treated to an
extremely informative
presentation by
Mr H Karthik, Partner,
Global Sourcing Practice,
Everest Group. Karthik
presented the insights
on Catalysing
Transformation Through
GICs - Global Best
Practices and Trends.
The next panel session of the day was a
discussion focussed around Role of Technology in
Transformation and moving up the Process
Maturity across Enterprise Functions. The
seasoned panel included Mr Sanjay Khanna,
Senior Executive with a Fortune 100 Multinational
Company, Mr Navneet Jhambh, Head of Finance
Shared Services & Analytics, Fidelity International,
and Mr Rajiv Kapahi, Sr. Director - India Hub,
Finance, Operations & Distribution, Boston
Scientific. The discussion was moderated by
Mr Rajesh Garodia, Chief Transformation
Architect, RvaluE Group.
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 21

Rajesh kept the focus of the panel on discussions
about the outlook towards Technology as an
Enabler or Driver, planning for positive Impact of
Technology on People, Process and Stakeholders,
while deliberating the reality of the business
cases. These powerful deliberations inside the
hall impacted all the participants at the Conclave
so much so that they carried forward the
discussions very determinedly and tirelessly over
a cup of coffee!
The last session of the day was moderated by
Mr Anand Maheshwari, Founder Director,
Quintes Global, comprised eminent panellists,
Mr Irendra Chhabra, CEO & MD of Essel
Business Excellence Services, Mr K V Sesaiah,
Senior Director, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, and
Mr Narendrra V Arora, Vice President – Global
Business Shared Services, Piramal Enterprises
Limited, who discussed and revealed the mantras
for Scaling Up, Sustaining and Transforming
Shared Services.
. the audience by SSF Excellence Awards Jury
The panel discussed about the key factors
responsible for transforming and sustaining
shared services, which included key Challenges
and Opportunities as well as pointers to gain Top
Management Sponsorship and Attention, to be
better positioned as the ‘Transformation Leaders’
and not getting diluted as a back office processing
department.
Followed by a day of deliberations was the
7th Annual Global Shared Services Excellence
Awards Evening. The evening witnessed a special
address by Dr BBL Madhukar, Director General
of BRICS Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 22
Dr Madhukar was joined by the eminent Jury
Chair, Mr VV Ranganathan and another eminent
member of the Excellence Awards Jury Panel,
Mr T Chandrasekar, also Vice President –
Finance & CFO, IBM India / South Asia. Both jury
members, along with Shri Sameep
Shastri, Dr BBL Madhukar,
Mr Ravi S Ramakrishnan and Mr Rakesh Sinha,
announced and gave away the Excellence awards
to all the winning organizations and individuals
The Award selection process was described to
chair, Mr VV Ranganathan. He formerly was a
Senior Partner with E&Y for many years where he
led several initiatives of the firm including co –
founding & steering the Marquee Global Program
– The Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, both in
India and Monaco.
The day was concluded with a Thank You note by
Mr Rakesh Sinha, Co-Founder, Shared Services
Forum and Executive Director & COO of RvaluE
Group.
The delegates and SSF members continued with
this valuable exchange of knowledge at the
informal cocktail-dinner hosted by SSF.
This annual event of SSF was supported by the
following partners: RvaluE, the Knowledge
Partner; Industry Partner, BRICS Chamber of
Commerce & Industry; Associate Sponsors, Nokia
and Intelenet Global; Research Partner, Everest
Group; Corporate Sponsors, ZingHR, Kohinoor
Foods, Achromic Point and Quintes Global;
Academic Partner, New Delhi Institute of
Management (NDIM); and Technology Partner,
Muniwar Technologies.
 Trading on the Edge
USING SUPER COMPUTING TO CATCH THAT ELUSIVE ‘MARKET TIP’
 SANDEEP TYAGI

Editor’s Note

Change and growth of Technology has always been of interest to us humans, as has been the single
largest source of transformation of our lives. The advent of Shared Services, GICs and BPM companies,
for instance, are a clear result of the advancing technologies which have created dramatic changes in
business processes as well as in infrastructure.

The cutting edge levels of technology are being rapidly absorbed by companies for their own benefits as
well as that of their customers. Shared Services, GICs and BPM companies should look outside and
beyond their internal company or clients and experience how technology is changing the life of the
ultimate customers. It is now time to create a structured ‘outside-in’ knowledge blueprint to remain
relevant. Progressive Shared Services, GICs could do well to leverage the innovation power of technology
to make a difference to their parent company or client business.

A New Age Trading Format on the Bourses

I ndia’s Bombay Stock Exchange, established
in 1875, was Asia’s first securities exchange
where brokers would meet and transact under a
tree. Indian capital markets have evolved
significantly and come a long way since then.
India is now an active hunting ground for global
traders and foreign institutions due to the
relative stability of earnings of Indian firms
compared to Asian peers, the dominance of
There are now several opportunities for applying
algorithmic and high frequency trading
strategies in India. Algorithmic trading, as the
name suggests, is a computer trading program
that automatically submits trades to an
exchange without any human intervention.
SEBI permitted algorithmic trading in 2008, and
market maturity has grown manifold since then.
Electronic trading now comprises more than 60%

‘
domestic consumption in the economy, relatively of total market volumes.
lower correlation with SEBI has supported the
global markets, and the Algorithmic trading is a computer need for greater
diversity of its equity technological
market. Even within the trading program that automatically
sophistication and is
country, the capital submits trades to an exchange without now expanding the

markets present an
attractive opportunity for any human intervention.
traders, market makers, and hedge funds. Indian
exchanges rank amongst the top exchanges
globally in terms of number of contracts traded
across equity, equity derivatives, and index
derivatives segments.
Competition amongst exchanges has also
intensified. Technology infrastructure across
exchanges is continuously being upgraded and
trading costs have come down significantly.
’
scope of participation by
bringing in more
participants under its regulatory ambit. It is
closely watching the growth in the algorithmic
trading space and continues to evolve risk-
management and market framework guidelines
for algorithmic trading in consultation with
market participants.
There are about 1750 securities traded on Indian
exchanges and over 350 of them are liquid and
actively traded. In a developing market such as
India, there are several market variations which
results in higher bid-ask and arbitrage spreads.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 24

These spreads were maintained by manual Latency has been minimized significantly, and
brokers, but now algo based market makers can the system can handle 2 billion order messages
maintain tighter spreads at a lower cost. High per second. BSE has implemented one of the
volumes, volatility and attractive spreads have fastest and highest throughput system in the
therefore made algo trading an attractive world.
proposition. Recognizing the benefits of
Tapping the Opportunity
algorithmic trading, SEBI and NSE/ BSE offered
direct market access in India in August 2008. The Indian market microstructure along with the
conducive trading environment throws open
several opportunities in arbitrage space, such
as:
Cross-Exchange Arbitrage
• There are significant volumes on multiple asset
classes across the various exchanges - NSE, BSE,
NCDEX, MCX, and MCX-SX. Cross-exchange
arbitrage takes the advantage of price differential
across these exchanges, howsoever minor.
There was some skepticism initially, however, Statistical Arbitrage
market participants saw the benefit of the • This involves a portfolio of large stocks - some long,
improved infrastructure and the share of non- some short - that are carefully matched statistically to
algorithmic trading has declined to ~40% since
eliminate risk. Portfolio construction is automated and
then.
‘scored’ by using substantial mathematical and
The Indian market has evolved rapidly over the computational platforms.
past decade and increasing sophistication
Quant-Based Long-Short Investing
amongst players, regulators, customers, and
exchanges has paved the way for market-wide • The vast majority of investment managers have
adoption of latest technology and an increase in traditionally followed a subjective investment process
market depth, breadth, and efficiency. SEBI has where emotion plays a big role in investment
over the years provided the requisite push for decisions. Quant based Long-short investing involves
greater technological adoption. using detailed highly skilled quantitative analysis to
The automation of design strategies for buying long equities that are
trading and post expected to increase in value and selling short those
trading systems on that are expected to decrease.
major stock
Quant based Shorting using Single-Stock Futures
exchanges ensured
that investors paid • There are several products like cash, futures and
less in trading options based on the same underlying security. The
spreads for their prices of these securities are linked by mathematical
trades and certainity. However the demand supply in these
fundamentally altered
securities varies during the day and an algorithmic
the economics of the
trader ensures that no arbitrage exists.
business of stock
exchanges. Driven by Cross-Product Arbitrage
the growing • India has a highly liquid market in single stock
prevalence of futures, especially in the top 100 securities by market
electronic trading, capitalization. This enables fund managers to use
there has been quant based strategies to short sell and generate
market-wide adoption Source: www.etmarkets.com
alpha from over-valued securities.
of improved technology across the value chain.
Over the last three years, there has been ~50% Evolution of Algo Trading Companies
improvement in data and speed of execution, The past few years have seen the rise of
through availability of tick-by-tick data, algorithmic trading companies all over the world.
improved market depth, and availability of Some of the best performing hedge funds
cleaned data for back-testing. All the exchanges attribute their success to it. Devoid of human
have been continuously investing in technology. emotions, repelling latency, technology-oriented
NSE has implemented horizontal scalability to and fast-paced, algorithmic trading executes
handle 10 times the current order flow. trading commands instantly and with accuracy.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 25

 The requirement of infrastructure and super
specialization, both in technology as well as
modern investment strategies has ensured that
trade decisions have moved from single
individuals to the tech systems.
Business Case for Trading Companies
At its core, the business is nothing more than
automating trading strategies. Liquidity
providers, jobbers, arbitragers have all been
present since stock exchanges have been
present. In the current scenario, all these
functions and strategies are being automated
and then optimized. The battle in the 'pits' has
moved to high end servers and low latency links
but the core objective remains the same. For the
traders and trading firms, the business case
moves from low volume, high margin case to
very high volume, low margin.
Strangely, in many instances there may be no
“customer” of the business. A majority of trading
is done with proprietary capital - so the risk and
reward lies solely with the company itself. In
such a situation, the “customer” at best, could
be the propriety fund holder, who could well be
the CEO of the trading house. However
conceptually, Algo, or High Frequency Trading
need not be restricted to propriety funds. The
same could well be applied to a traditional
model of trading on behalf of an individual (or
organization) for a fee.
The entire business case is based on the
accuracy of prediction of market movements, as
computed by propriety systems using very
sophisticated strategies. Hence the “suppliers”
to this business line, in most cases, would be
the providers of technology applications, trading
strategy experts, and data providers (the
exchanges). In several cases, experts design
their own strategies as well as their own trading
applications.
As the prevalence and popularity of Algo trading
has grown in India, most commercial brokers
offer access to connect via an “API” to their
customers at very low or no fees. Sophisticated
traders can use these APIs and develop their
strategies to automatically send orders to the
exchange, hence building an algo trading system
from their homes.
As is obvious, the use of high-end technology is
critical to this business. Artificial Intelligence
and machine learning are used to develop
smarter strategies to trade more profitably.
Some of the popular trading applications/APIs
used in India are Omnesys Nest, Presto ATS,
ODIN, AlgoNomics, MetaTrader and Estee.
Work-flow/ Indicators/ Challenges/ Risks
In a professional automated setup, most work
flows are also automated. A simple standard
work flow is given in the table below:

WORK FLOW
Market data from the exchange on a tick by tick basis. This means every change in market data is
reported by the exchange and captured and assessed by the software. Change may involve a
INPUT
change in any bid/ ask price in the order book; change in any bid/ ask quantity; change in total
traded volume or last traded price.

The 'strategy' process then kicks in and does an analysis on the latest tick received. The strategy
process, based on its analysis decides whether any action is required based on this new input. If
ANALYSIS
an action is required, it sends a message to this effect. This may be an order modification/ order
cancellation/ new order generation.

Once the message on action required is communicated by the strategy, the message goes through
a layer of risk check. This risk check layer verifies whether this new/ modified/ cancelled order
would result in a breach of any of various risk limit parameters that have been set up by the risk
RISK
management process. The risk management process sets multiple limits including margin check,
max order size/ value check, loss limit check etc. If the new action does not result in a breach of
any limits, the risk layer allows the message to go through.

Once the risk layer allows the action to pass through, the order adapter takes the action and
communicates it to the stock exchange through the communication channel designated by the
EXECUTION exchange. The order adapter sends the message to the exchange and receives an
acknowledgement which it communicates back to the Strategy as an input, hence completing the
loop.

The acknowledgement and market data is also provided as an input to a central risk monitoring
system which calculates margin on a real time basis as the market moves and provides updated
MONITORING
values to the risk layer in order to allow it to check new orders sent against the most updated
values.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 26

Rogue Trading Prevention Methodologies
Rogue trading in this scenario involves the
Strategy sending messages which causes
unintended consequences. Though the risk layer
is meant to catch these sort of issues, however,
sometimes either the risk layer is not designed
appropriately to prevent these issues or is not
implemented/ controlled appropriately. This
leads to runaway trading scenarios sometime
resulting in flash crashes as well. This is always
harmful for the company in question and
sometimes for the market in general as well.
Since this format of trading is completely driven
by systems, internal risks from employees
themselves carrying out trades for their personal
benefits or other intentional malpractices is low.
However, as in all prop trading firms, each
employee is required to submit details of all
trades they have conducted in the stock
exchanges and are also required to take prior
permission if they trade on individual stocks
(other than possibly indices or mutual funds).
Such restrictions are even tighter in case the
firm is involved in market research as well.
Certain unethical
practices such as
‘front running’ has
happened since
forever. In this case
the traders themselves
attempt to trade
before the price
changes based on an
actual order is placed
by their client.
These practices can happen even in an algo
trading setup. However all over the world such
practices are now illegal and companies put in
place strict measures to prevent this.
Data Security
Strategy code and logic is highly valuable IP for
any company.
Even information on trades and trading activity
is guarded closely. This is primarily done
through high-end firewalls and role based
access systems.
Special Skills
The need for specialized skills for running such
companies successfully could well depend upon
the type of strategies followed by them. For
instance for firms largely following high
frequency trading, strategies or trading logic is
relatively straight forward and known to all.
However, the differentiating factor is execution
of this strategy. Hence, technical coding skills
are key – Most HFT firms would be present on
Day 1 at IIT. On the other hand, firms that are
Non HFT/ Non-Market Neutral trading
strategies require a very different skill set. This
requires a unique logic towards trading -
through research/ analysis of market
movements/ order book etc. - and here
execution is relatively straight forward. Typically
such firms hire laterally from the existing pool of
traders having deep analytical skills to carry out
the intensive research required.
Combination of Machine Learning with the
following technologies could create wonders:
Use of nanotechnology in trading
Use of crypto-currency for services
Internet of Things IoT, etc.
Quantum Computing
Block chain technology
Cloud Computing
Big Data
Superfast microwave transmission
technology that transmits data at
the speed of light
*Source: www.quantinsti.com
What Next?
India is slightly on the back foot in the cutting
edge world of algo trading. The more developed
markets are successfully experimenting on both
increasing depth and width of trading.
Applications employing Machine Learning carry
out multiple transactions per second and
continuously improve themselves by analyzing
data. This form of ‘learning’ further refines the
strategy allowing more options for finer levels of
trade.
On the other hand latency is being tapped and
crunched even more. The use of Microwaves to
transfer data has begun to show very positive
trends.
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 27
 Transactions now happen not merely over micro
seconds, but over nano seconds. Instead of a
few hundred or thousand transactions (orders) a
second, machines have now graduated to
generate thousands of orders in a millisecond.
Contribution of Contribution of
Algorithmic Trading to Algorithmic Trading
current Trading Volume in Global Trades
in India
Pie Chart 1 Source: Morton Glantz, Robert Kissell;
Pie Chart 2 – Source: Thomson Reuters
A transformational Innovation
The industry has globally and in India been a
very successful contributor for the tremendous
rise in market liquidity and also huge drop in
impact cost, which is also a measure of cost that
a buyer or seller has to incur due to the sheer
lack of liquidity of any particular stock. There is
no doubt that this industry has now become the
norm rather than the exception by the use of
computer technology, which has been nothing
short of transformational. Trading at the micro
level has dramatically changed the way the
traditionalists thought. Weeding out
inefficiencies in markets is a very important next
step in a robust and stable market, which is
what this industry practice does. This leads to
accurate price discovery and very tight bid/ ask
spreads which in turn enable and give
confidence to various traders to trade in the
markets. This in-turn increases market depth
and reach, hence improving liquidity and
reducing risk. PE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sandeep Tyagi is a quant and algorithms expert and serial entrepreneur, who has
started and successfully scaled several profitable businesses. He was the founder and
CEO of Inductis, a consulting and analytics firm that he scaled up and subsequently
sold to EXL Service. He is also a board member of the YPO and a recipient of the 40
under 40 award from New Jersey. He is a B. Tech. from IIT Delhi and an MBA from
Columbia Business School. He also holds a Certificate in Quantitative Finance (CQF).

Sandeep is the Chairman of Estee Advisors Pvt Ltd, a quant-based investment

management and execution and services provider. Estee is a pioneer in building
algorithmic investment products and has a strong track record as an investment
manager and trade execution services provider in Indian capital markets. Estee is a
SEBI-registered Portfolio Manager Service (PMS) provider and a registered broker-
member with all the major Indian exchanges.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 28

 The New Age Human Resource
LEVERAGING AI FOR A HIGH-TECH & HIGH-TOUCH EXPERIENCE
 PRIYANKA ANAND

T he thing which I have learned from my

experience in HR is that the technology we use
The Need for Change
Human Resource is supposed to be the
changes constantly, but the human intermediary between the organization and the
fundamentals often remain the same. In one of people. It is supposed to first lay the foundation
my discussions with a veteran of the HR and then manage the rules of engagement. Our
industry, he surprised me by throwing an answer biggest challenge in developed and rapidly

‘
to my question. developing economies
The changing dynamics of success has been the shortage
My ask was to know his of skilled talent pool.
thought on what HR stories moving from initiatives to As this demand bloats
professionals have failed sustenance of the tacit knowledge of with time, the turf war
at in the past 20 years. between economies is
His answer was “being human resource has largely been missed

organized”.
– and there lies the future challenge.
Nothing to be surprised about, except that it
came from a person who spent most of his
career dealing with the notoriety of unionism.
My curiosity made me plunge into a deeper
discussion with him on the idea of being
organized from an HR professional’s
perspective. The changing dynamics of success
stories moving from initiatives to sustenance of
the tacit knowledge of human resource has
largely been missed – and there lies the future
challenge. Clearly it is high time that, as
technology is advancing, HR professionals
should also adapt to its advancements. A hands-
on approach to the latest technology with some
smart thinking can bring in the change. This is
where AI is playing a vital role in the industry.
’
making it grim for
uncompetitive
economies and the
organizations working within its periphery.
Looking at Indian HR practices specifically, we
mostly fail to make effective innovations in the
critical operational fields, such as recruitment
processes and service coordination. Recruitment
platforms and social hiring as an example, have
grown rapidly in acceptance but the next level of
thinking in terms of combining the initial fresh
hire training with recruitment is still absent. This
is specially a huge gap in most HR teams’ ways
of working as most often the highest levels of
attrition are recorded during the initial period of
on-boarding, training and ramp-up.
Talent acquisition can be one of the most time
consuming and frustrating aspects of our
business. Of a typical outreach program, only
20% or so potential candidates are looking for
change. It is tough for any recruiter to meet the
ever demanding harsh deadlines and special
requirements, not to mention the piles of
sometimes irrelevant applications and resumes
that need to be read and understood. With
retention accountability and expectation of
superior candidate experience, the job becomes
even harder. An organization’s candidate
experience is directly associated with their
employer brand. Failing to attend to your
employer brand can be detrimental to your
organization.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 30

According to a CareerArc survey, nearly 60% of
candidates surveyed said they had a poor
candidate experience, and 72% of those
candidates shared that experience online or with
someone directly. The emerging HR technology
throughout the last decade has strived to take
away many such frustrations while improving
candidate experience and quality of hire.
AI is the Present and Future
Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and
other “smart” technologies are no longer
something in the far-off future. In fact, they are
already driving many of the innovative recruiting
and hiring technologies available right now.
‘
For instance, many
recruiters find it …if the HR and recruiting products
extremely tedious to
respond to all created today are not as easy to use as a wrong selection.
applications received.
the apps on our phones, people just will It is in crunching the
65% of candidates
(CareerArc Candidate
not use them.
Experience Study) say they either never or rarely
receive employer notice of the decision made on
their application. 60% of applicants say “better
communication throughout and after the
application process,” would have the most
positive impact. A CareerBuilder survey found
that 40% of candidates feel the application
process has become increasingly difficult.
Using AI, the feedback from the candidate can
further be applied to the selection process
enabling the recruitment team to easily see how
each candidate ranks from the applicants
selected by the platform. Having AI integrated
into the recruiting process would allow
candidates to ask relevant questions throughout
the application process as well as provide
meaningful answers from the recruitment team.
Thus most of the tedious, cumbersome and
time-consuming processes of recruiting are
gradually being automated, which means
recruiting teams are getting the opportunity to
be more strategic than ever before.
Impact on Recruiters in AI Era
AI is at the top of the hype cycle right now.
Basically AI is a mechanism that takes a huge
amount of data and crunches it into something
one can easily interpret or analyze. You can ask
Alexa (Amazon's voice controlled digital
assistant) what the climate is and it lets you
know. All it did was look into the climate report
on the web, transform that information into
words and shared it with you. In the hiring
context, AI will be able to calculate the
probability that one person will be a better hire
than another by looking for patterns that come
closest to the criteria you input. That is basically
what recruiters do in their heads manually when
considering candidates — weighing some
attributes more than the others, maybe at a
subconscious level,
which at times, leads to
’
large unstructured data
where AI is playing the
Important role. We all use structured data, like
figures on a spread sheet that can be counted
and multiplied. Let us assume we interviewed 35
people, made 14 offers and had 5 accepts.
That is expressing or deriving the results
from structured data. But being able to look at
what someone says, or writes, and understand it
and make decisions based on it, such as
reviewing resumes and online profiles — that is
using unstructured data. That is where AI is
attempting to do better than recruiters do.
AI can obviously also process data much more
quickly than the human mind, but it needs a lot
of data to be of value. "The more data you have,
the better your decisions. You need thousands
of data points to get accurate predictions. If
you're only using hiring data from 100 or 150
people, you're getting highly skewed results"
(Sourced from Roy Maurer’s September 2017
article on Talent Acquisition).
How AI Will Affect Recruiting
Chatbots are an excellent example of emerging
AI based social media messaging apps. These
are artificial conversational entities used in apps
like LinkedIn or Facebook messenger, wherein
the app automatically replies to your message
and most of the time delivers an accurate
response. So even the most basic chatbot can
be useful for initial candidate interactions and
can improve careers’ site retention. The average
chatbots can schedule interviews and screen
candidates with basic questions. More
sophisticated ones can match candidates and do
advanced search.
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 31
 Additionally, AI can enhance workforce planning
- and that is where it can be incredibly helpful. It
can find patterns among heaps of data. AI will
soon transform Recruitment from largely a
transactional function — scheduling,
interviewing, clerical routine stuff — into
something that truly adds value to the company.
Challenges that need to be Addressed
The quality issues of the hires coming from our
education system, unfortunately happens to be
the next source of worry. With organizations and
businesses investing significant energy and
time, it is a natural obligation of HR, from a
business partner perspective, to be innovative
and move towards influencing quality and also
relevant curriculum in the field of education. The
tying-up of corporates with the fine balance of
time-relevant education practices is an
opportunity which is rarely being demonstrated
by the HR fraternity, leaving some honorable
exceptions aside. Employee retention naturally is
also tied up to the same framework.
The other aspect of the same issue is to move to
the more unconventional forms of hiring.
Contracting is likely to be the next big thing in
the Indian job market, and the change
management it will require will be tough.
Proactive work on Compensation & Rewards is
the right solution to this upcoming trend. For
instance, offering personalized packages tells
the employees that their personal needs are as
valid as the company's business goals, and this
is being justifiably enabled with the intervention
of AI's tireless computing power. The HR
professionals can leverage company analytics to
predict employee trends and identify workforce
challenges that would otherwise be overlooked,
and therefore efficiently administer flexible
compensation to critical talent groups. There are
organizations which have found some success in
this space but the learning needs to be shared.
It is being concentrated to a few industries and
remains to be seen as a popular choice with
future employees and executives.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The natural or conventional role of HR has been
optimizing productivity but this has to move on
from the abstracts of motivation and training
imperatives. Identifying poor work practices and
areas of resource crunch are examples of
moving to the next level of maximizing
efficiencies through technology.
Disruptive initiatives both in terms of technology
and internal consulting practices of governance
and service frameworks have changed the new
age HR. Project Management and
communication at a constant pace of change
has become the need of the hour for the HR
professional. In some of the surveys conducted
with global samples of professionals, it is to our
surprise that we find the majority acknowledge
the job for HR as being policies, processes and
people management programs. Only a few
enlisted the HR job role to be connecting the
dots to enhance resource output, engagement
with long term vision, business financials and
technology together. This strategic alliance of
these elements enables consistency in
improvement objective of increased productivity
without additional strain of size, cost or
infrastructure.
Conclusion
Globalization in its youth had benefitted a lot of
economies. However, the essence of the
continuity lies in addition and improvement.
Constant environment changes are leading to
newer demands and several issues in HR
domain. We are working in a compact yet
globalized ecosystem where the need is to
influence the input at our end, matching it with
the output from the ecosystem, thus influencing
the output that we further want to achieve,
which is aligned to the organization vision. This
can be managed when we have a technologically
advanced and informed HR which is “organized”
and is serious for its next role as influencers of
quality. PE

An accomplished business professional, with proven results in developing and leading

world-class HR programs and operations across geographies to complement
corporate strategy, Priyanka Anand is associated with Ericsson as Head of Human
Resource MOAI (South East Asia, Oceania and India) and involved in driving global
people strategy in the Market Area. With a team of more than 60 HR professionals
cutting across Countries, Customer Units and SME areas, together supporting 17000 +
employees present across MOAI.
In her previous role she was Vice President and Head, HR Global Operations at
Ericsson since April 2014 and was Vice President and Head - Human Resources at
Ericsson Global Services, India from July 2010 till April 2014. She has also worked with
Colt Technologies, STG and Manpower and holds the management degree in HR.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 32

Delivering Financial Services Faster & Better
HOW BFSI CAN LEVERAGE AGILE TRANSFORMATION
 RAHUL SINGH
W e live in an era of instant gratification.
Everything we need has to be delivered on
demand –anytime, anywhere we want it.
Financial services are no different. As Internet
and smartphones increasingly facilitate real-time
payments, fund transfers, settlements and other
financial transactions, customer expectations
from their banks, insurers and mutual funds
continue to evolve rapidly.
‘
If a bank’s customers are not …the conventional BFSI
engaging with its latest app
release, then it must harness IT architecture will have to be is, BFSI firms recognize this
user feedback to plug the gaps
and roll out a revised, improved
reengineered for the industry pressing need for digitally
version at the earliest. If the to effectively serve the needs of have
mobile banking and Internet
banking channels are currently the millennial generation.
displaying different customer data, then that bug
has to be fixed quickly. And so on and so forth. A
failure to effectively address customers’ queries,
and act on their feedback, can lead to increased
client churn and diminished brand reputation.
MORE AGILE
RESPONSIVE
BIG DATA BFSI
ECOSYSTEM EFFICIENT
INNOVATIVE
With disruptive trends such as consumerization,
automation, Big Data and telematics
fundamentally redefining the Banking, Financial
Services and Insurance (BFSI) ecosystem,
financial institutions must become more agile,
responsive, efficient and innovative. BFSI
companies need to build new capabilities, adopt
new ways of working, embrace new workspaces,
and above all, develop a completely new mindset
with regard to operations, customer service and
other core functions. Just to put this imperative
in context, banks today are focused on delivering
compelling and consistent omni-channel
experiences, complying with regulation, averting
fraud, and reducing costs.
However, over the next 10 years, banks will have
to also establish themselves as credible
repositories of customers’ trust, and provide
real-time and secure services in an automated
and integrated manner.
Need to Reinvent Digitally
Accordingly, the conventional BFSI IT
architecture will have to be reengineered for the
industry to effectively serve
the needs of the millennial
generation. The good news
reinventing themselves, and
been aggressively
’
leveraging technologies such
as artificial intelligence,
blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) to
create differentiated customer experiences.
Every financial institution is reimagining its IT
model from the grounds up.
However, orchestrating this transition is easier
said than done, since many of the sector’s
legacy systems lack the requisite flexibility to
accommodate new functionalities. Also,
stringent regulations do not exactly smoothen
the process for BFSI firms to partner with non-
financial institutions across various industries,
for enabling on-demand customer experiences.
I firmly believe BFSI companies need to embrace
a fundamentally “NEW IT” thinking, across the
following dimensions:
 First, IT innovation has to be centred around
customer centricity, and must be driven by
data analytics to understand and address
consumers’ requirements appropriately – and
quickly.
 Second, BFSI IT must adopt “Platform
Thinking” in relation to IT delivery, including
experimenting with Agile/ DevOps
methodologies and considering rolling out a
decoupled, decentralized framework. This
shift is critical for banks to be able to launch
new products faster, in line with rapidly
shifting customer preferences and demands.
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 33
  Third, financial firms must promote a
collaborative work culture across their
organization, as well as the broader
ecosystem, in terms of encouraging a “Fail
Fast” philosophy and reducing dependence
on proprietary tech.
 Finally, they need to be flexible and scalable
enough to disrupt their assumptions and
operating models, based on continuous
learning and rebuild, from scratch, if required.
The New IT Service Delivery Framework
In order to navigate this transition smoothly,
financial services firms need to adopt a new IT
service delivery framework that is based on the
four pillars:
‘NEW IT’
THINKING
CUSTOMER CENTRIC
COLLABORATION
adopt an operating model that’s built on real-
time reporting and flat organizational structure.
The AGILE Proposition
So, how can financial institutions begin
implementing such a framework?
 To start with, they should do a pilot to
validate the Agile proposition for their
organization. The trial run should involve a
product revamp entailing not too many
functional modules, so that a cross-
functional team can brainstorm and iterate
on the product’s various sub-components.
 Banks can then conduct group-based
workshops for defining the deliverable’s core
aspects with all relevant stakeholders. As
part of this exercise, the team would develop
user personas, capture product
requirements, chart workflows, etc.
 The next step is to integrate the product

build into a common repository on a daily

SCALABILITY
INNOVATION

basis, so that the code can be tested in an

AGILITY

automated manner. Programmers can then

The framework should foster rollout of Agile and
DevOps methodologies for accelerated software
delivery, helping the organization reduce time to
market for new products and services. For
facilitating increased collaboration within and
outside the organization, the architecture must
enable the institutionalization of a common,
integrated workspace for various stakeholders
within BFSI companies. For example, banks
should be able to leverage the framework to tie
up with universities, fintechs and third parties
for ideating around and developing cutting-edge
solutions. To ensure rapid innovation, the
framework also needs to help banks smoothly
align themselves with cutting-edge tools and
technologies, such as cognitive systems,
artificial intelligence, machine learning,
blockchain and Big Data. Finally, for ensuring
robust IT governance, the framework should
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
iterate the build on the basis of early defect
detection.
 The last, but not the least, phase in the Agile
delivery roadmap is for BFSI institutions to
end their long-held practice of separating
delivery and quality assurance (QA) teams.
The user acceptance testing (UAT) team,
embedded into the sprint-based delivery unit,
conducts tests, and identifies bugs quickly
for swift remediation, thus ensuring a
substantial reduction in churn.
In Summary
All in all, I feel we have barely scratched the
surface of the BFSI IT architecture re-
imagination landscape. Banks, insurers and
other financial firms need to use this transition
period to quickly test out or revise some of their
hypotheses, and accordingly build new systems.
And, I am confident the industry will significantly
enhance its value proposition in the coming
years by adopting a next-gen IT framework that
makes them more efficient, productive and
effective. PE

Rahul Singh is President of HCL’s Financial Services Division. He is responsible for

managing and steering the business, developing relationships with clients and taking
long-term investment and strategic decisions to meet the technology and operation
needs of the financial services and Fintech clients.
Rahul brings with him over 30 years of experience across outsourcing, technology,
banking and financial services. He is widely recognized as an industry pioneer in the
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) segment for financial services in India and has
been the recipient of SSF’s ‘Pioneer BPM Achiever’ award in 2016. He is now an
authority on the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on financial services. In
2018 he was invited by the World Economic Forum in Davos to present his thoughts
on innovations and emerging opportunities in the investment industry to a select
group of CEOs, bankers and technology leaders.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 34

Highlights from the Research Report on ‘Building
Capabilities for Future and Catalyzing Transformation’
TRENDS, PRACTICES & FRAMEWORKS
 TEAM SSF

Continuing with its objective to seamlessly disseminate knowledge, Shared Services Forum released a
Research Report on ‘Building Capabilities for the Future and Catalyzing Transformation – Trends,
Practices and Frameworks’, prepared by SSF in collaboration with Everest Group. The report was unveiled
on November 24, 2018 at SSF’s 7th Annual Global Shared Services Conclave . Below are some Highlights
from the same report .

I mplementation of various elements of BPM

by GICs have not only enabled them to build the
required capabilities to sustain themselves for
future but also successfully effectuate
transformation. Today GICs are at an inflection
point in their evolution journey, as they have
expanded beyond providing low-cost delivery to
being agents of change – for enterprises’ back-
and middle-office services. The market has now
grown to ~2,668 centres across leading offshore
locations, compared to ~1,885 GICs in 2010. In
fact, 134 new GICs were set up in 2016 alone.
BPM (Business Process Management) refers
to any initiative in the business world leading to
a change or an improvement in the processes for
the betterment of the customer, shareholder,
employee and other stakeholders.
Effective adoption of BPM – Key Elements
Business Process Consolidation (BPC) of the
processes is done in one or more locations
across enterprise functions such as Finance,
Human Resources, Information Technology,
Operations, Supply Chain, Customer Life Cycle
Management, Etc. BPMS on the other hand, has
two major components - BPM Systems and
BPM Skills & Capabilities. BPMS is a single or
a group of software systems that automate and
simplify the task of managing business
processes, supplementing or complementing
the ERPs. BPM Skills & Capabilities are
increasingly playing a pivotal role in enabling all
other dimensions – BPC, BPT & BPM systems.
Business Process Transformation (BPT)
refers to improving/ transforming the way things
are done. Incremental changes can be called
improvements (BPI) and radical changes and
fundamental rethinking or redesign are called
reengineering (BPR).
The illustration below brings forth the holistic
approach of BPM for business processes.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 35

 This research report studies the delivery
trends, practices and frameworks for global
services, with a focus on GICs as they account
for a quarter of the global services market,
small-scale GICs (< 500FTEs) comprising 70%
of GIC market share. BPM has a major role to
play in ensuring that mature GICs elevate their
“ticket to play” by delivering additional business
impact.
Global Services Industry Trends – focus on
GICs
 The global offshore services market was
estimated to be around ~US$175 billion in
2016 and it continues to grow in terms of
‘New Delivery Centres’.
 GICs support a range of functions –
Provide IT, BP, and R&D / engineering
services support to their parent. Aggressive
adopters of GIC model have achieved
significant penetration from India GICs (For
instance, >40% for typical IT/BP services.
 Technology and communication vertical leads
in terms of number of GICs; BFSI dominates
the GIC market in terms of headcount with
nearly 40% of the overall industry workforce.
Distribution of GICs by vertical
Number of GICs and FTEs, 2016
 Creating breakthrough results in digital
requires an end-to-end business process
view, right from back-office to front-office.
Back-office
(e.g., Procurement, F&A, HR)
Core mid-office
(e.g., Operations & Production)
Market-facing front-office
(e.g., Sales and Marketing)
Source: Everest Group (2017)
 GICs will face hiring challenges for multiple
skills important in the future which include
intuitive, innovative, design thinking, pattern
recognition, problem solving and leadership.
58%* GICs believe that up skilling/reskilling
will be a key lever to address the changing
skill requirements. They are also revisiting
their talent acquisition and development
strategy.
Source: Survey on "Upskilling/reskilling in GICs" with 80+ GICs
Everest Group (2017)
Call to Action for GICs to Catalyze the
Enterprise Digital Agenda
 Prioritize investments
 Identify role: Follow/Influence/Lead
 Revamp talent and operating model
 Adopt business-outcome metrics

Frameworks for Building Capabilities

PARTNERSHIP EXCELLENCE
PMM (PROCESS MATURITY FRAMEWORK
MODEL) Apply levers for moving up
Assess Processes across 6 the Relationship Value
Parameters under 5 Levels Chain by utilizing current
to move towards process, customer, projects
continuous value delivery and performance
information
eSCM – eSOURCING
DIGITAL METAMORPHOSIS
CAPABILITY MODEL
Source: Everest Group (2017) Going beyond the ‘whys’
Leverage the Global Best
and focus on ‘how’
Practices Model (eSCM) for
Building Capabilities for the Future – organisations need to
Business Services Space to
Practices prepare themselves for the
benchmark, develop and
Digital Metamorphosis and
enhance Organizational
 Disruptive forces – technology-led Capabilities
transition successfully
disruptions, increased focus on business
outcomes and talent management – are Dx QUOTIENT
creating an inflection point for GICs to lead Executing digital transformation
enterprises’ transformation agenda. (Digital Execution – Dx) requires
 Share of digital in scope of services delivered exploring and exploiting the power of
from GICs shows an increase from 12% in IT with the entire business value
chain with the impact directly
2013 to 28% in 2016. dependent upon the Dx Quotient of
 RPA implementation has the potential to an organization
result in cost savings (driven by reduction of
headcount) of 20-25%. Through this research report, SSF aims at
 Clients are expecting a different services enabling businesses and GICs to establish new
model to meet ‘new’ value expectations – benchmarks in BPM excellence and deliver ‘new’
effort elimination, outcomes and innovation. value in their business outcomes. PE

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 36

Connected Customer Experience
AN INNOVATIVE CASE OF IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT TRANSFORMATION
 ANAND RAJHANS

I magine you are travelling on a Saturday

afternoon. You feel hungry and you stop by a
 Lacked a single interface with a single source
of record
 Lacked a user friendly client interface & self-
pizzeria to order a pizza. Within few minutes a
service capabilities
fresh, hot and delicious pizza arrives. You satiate
 Reporting needed a lot of customization and
your hunger and continue with your journey
was not very flexible
happily. What if the pizza took an hour to arrive
 Carried a high costs for license, upgrades and
or you were served the wrong order? You would
support
have been rather disappointed, or even upset.
 Was lacking of efficient knowledge
To provide a remarkable customer experience it
repositories
is critical to be both prompt and accurate. IT
 Had poor vendor services

‘
Services cannot be an exception to that rule.
IT effectiveness is Clearly it was time to
directly proportional to
The Service Management team seek out alternative
the user or customer at Syngenta Global Delivery Center has options. Extensive
satisfaction, which is study and current
key to the success of consistently delivered results much better industry standards
IT function. than the industry standard since last couple helped us to choose
ServiceNow (Modern
Taking inspiration of years and transformed itself into a SM tool) as our

from the above but
not limited to such Center of Excellence in a short span of time.
best practices, the
Service Management team at Syngenta Global
Delivery Center has consistently delivered
results much better than the industry standards
and transformed itself into a Center of
Excellence in a remarkably short span of time.
The Background
A legacy IT Service Management (ITSM) tool
was used in Syngenta for many years. This tool
was being used by 40,000+ Syngenta identities,
including suppliers across globe (EAME, NA,
LATAM, APAC), serving all IT related support
services. Most of the users were unhappy with
this tool and there were huge costs being
incurred for its support and usage. Overall, there
were quite a few challenges with the legacy
ITSM environment, such as:
 It was heavily customized and no tangible
benefits
 Its inability for end-to-end delivery of IT
services, including project governance and
documentation
’
global Service
Management
platform.
The expectation was to extend its capabilities to
all business functions (HR, Finance, etc.)
within Syngenta Business Services and enable
a ‘One Stop Shop’ for all services.
The Mission
The journey started with selecting the right
methodology for the ITSM platform and tool
management. Traditional methodologies pose
many challenges in terms of cost, customer
satisfaction and agility. They fail to measure up
to the expectations of the customers in terms of
speed and flexibility, thus compromising on the
user experience. The new platform would have
to counter these lacunas and cover people,
process and technology from scratch. To do this
effectively one had to use the best technology
available and implement Dev-Ops methodology.
Dev-Ops methodology puts the customer first
and offers significantly better quality, improved
efficiency, more reliable releases and above all
saving on cost and time.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 37

 The Ambition
A clear statement of ambition set the direction.
Extensive research and benchmarking was done.
While the implementation was on, peer
implementations too were studied. The team at
Syngenta Global Delivery Center set up the Dev-
Ops function following the vision set up by the
Management. Based on the success of the local
team, the team was expanded to global locations
like Manchester UK and Basel, Switzerland. The
Dev-Ops team was set up in Dec 2015 for the
tool as well as Service Management. Within
almost 6 months of its inception a Center of
Excellence for the service covering the
Technology, Process and related Consultancy
was functional.
The service was shaped as user-centric to aid Figure 1.1: Dev-Ops and Polymorphism; the
the related service transformation, leading to function behaves differently for different inputs
simplification and ease of use for the clients. with relevant outputs in the production system(s)
This capability for technology management also
created a foundation for Service Integration and The Transformation
Management (SIAM). The team had become a As the CoE (entire function) was being created
proud pioneer of the same within the from scratch, almost all the elements in the
organization. context were defined anew. At the beginning,
Our Vision only tool administration was put in place. The
support model was setup to serve clients
To create an Internal Capability to deliver globally in their respective time zones by the
superior technical services to our customers central team working in shifts. It started with IT
using an integrated, flexible and modular Operations Management (ITOM) by supporting
approach the implemented IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
The Concept processes for the company. The operations and
development teams were finally set up, led by an
One can find a striking commonality between operations lead and a solution designer
Object Oriented Programming concepts and the respectively.
nature of the Dev-Ops function. The behavior of
the different elements are carefully designed Dev-Ops – Journey Towards SIAM
and accordingly the structure created. In the
diagram below, right hand side of the cube
represents Operations part of Dev-Ops where
inputs like incidents or service disruptions get
converted to service restorations.
The incidents or service requests get fixed into
respective production client(s) and represent the
reactive part of service. The problem
management tickets and updates to knowledge
management end up in the implementation of
proactive part of service operations. Figure 1.2: The Dev-Ops Concept

The left hand side of the cube represents the
Dev part of Dev-Ops. The user stories are the
inputs which get converted to implemented
functionalities in the production client to serve
business as per their requirements. All the
requests passing through the cube are governed
by a governance board represented by all the
relevant stakeholders. The top sphere on the
cube represents the Steering Committee for
setting up the strategic direction and to finance
the project.
Importance was given for cross sharing the
knowledge and internal training and growth of
the resources. Some of the highlights were:
• Seamless integration between day-to-day
operations, support & development
 Highly innovated team
 Very lean approach
 Faster turnaround
 Higher CSAT
 Retaining the knowledge by in-house solution
design

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 38

The Governance Structure
A governance mechanism was set up at two
levels:
 At the product level a Steering Committee
(SC) was put in place to set the strategic
direction for the tool. This committee
consisted of some of the most senior
members like CIO, SBS head, Global Finance
Services Head, Global HR Services Head,
Global Delivery Excellence Head, and so on.
This committee was to provide the finance
and support the organizational change
ServiceNow (SM Tool) Dev-Ops Getting into Details....
Figure 2.1: Governance Board run by Solution Designer, Dual hatting as a Scrum Master
The Operations
Any user on the company network could submit
an idea, enhancement or a change request
through a catalogue item as a user story.
User Stories Distribution & Management
management from the top, amongst other
things.
 Operational governance was put in place by
setting up a Governance Board (GB). It
consisted of members from different
business units, Client Service Management,
Global Service Desk, Application Support,
Infrastructure Support teams and so on. The
GB provided approvals for small changes and
small projects. The requests got discussed
within the GB in the form of user stories.
Healthy debate and dialog was encouraged
between the members.
All the requests would get scrutinized by
Operations Lead. If necessary, he could get into
a one-on-one discussion with requestor to get
more details.
Figure 2.2: Solution Designer
distributes the work in the form
of user stories, can choose best
talent for development and has a
full control over the development
and deployable being developed.
Once approved by Operations Lead the story
would move to the GB for debate run by the
Solution Designer. After due approvals from the
GB, the Solution Designer would prepare
possible solutions based on one or more user
stories. If necessary Solution Designer would
create/ fine tune the user stories to distribute it
to the appropriate teams to develop and test.
PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 39
 Once the user story is ready after testing, the Using this methodology, the Solution Designer
Solution Designer would integrate the same to would have the complete accountability of the
create a deliverable. If necessary, further rounds tool blueprint and the technical knowhow
of testing would be carried out. Solution remains in-house. Development happens in
Designer could also select appropriate resources modules ensuring freedom from any single
for testing as well. resource or supplier.

Building a Services Management Capability

The following figure shows capability functions, across geographies by using the
development services that were delivered across Center of Excellence.

Release 4 will be covering the complete HR Management project and a few more
technical released
Key points
 Syngenta will be using the maximum capabilities of the tool suit by 2019…

Release 3 covered E to E master data management setup. Automation and partial asset and stock
management
Key points
 Manual effort reduction with time saving of 2 Hrs, cost saving $13 per ticket for a territory support
 Turned the tool with high business season requirements

Release 2 covered Finance Services, a Pilot Implementation for HR Services Indonesia and
Thailand and Technical Upgrade by Internal team
Key points
 Unified tool made customer experience way better, reduced complexity in IT Landscape
 Benefits realization from internal team set up
 Mobile version created customer delight and usage became platform independent
 Only HR pilot saved more than $100K

Project started with legacy ITSM tool replacement including knowledge

management tool set up
Key points
 First place achievement $1.5 Mn YoY savings
 Created In-House team ; >$200K YoY savings compared to vendor quote

 Set up Dev-Ops methodology first time in Syngenta (Results – Incident resolution rate
~90%WoW; CSAT ~90% --- Avg3 days per user story delivery
 Presented Syngenta-Snow Success story in vendor conference (Knowledge 16) at Las Vegas

The Achievement
This unique function is delivering astounding It can help IT functions to reduce corporate cost
results. A supplier independent and vendor and at the same time increase agility, customer
neutral framework is delivering information satisfaction and employee satisfaction. Above
technology service to business in a most agile all, it reduces the dependency on suppliers and
way. This framework can be adopted to work by retaining the knowledge within the
with most cloud based tools and platforms. It organization.
has enormous benefits and can be extended to
broader IT community.
The Outcome
Best of All Worlds
There were several examples of
successful outcomes, strategic
and tactical, related to the
service.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 40

The following table shows how the Quantitative and Qualitative results converted in company’s favour.
CATEGORY ADVANTAGES
Higher Customer Satisfaction (approx. 90%)
Enables 'Bring Your Own Device'; this DIY feature empowers users to get the real time
reports
Journey towards one support tool and service. E2E view across functions – General IT,
Customer Delight
HR ticketing, Finance ticketing, Cloud Orchestration, Facilities Management, CMDB,
end user portal, KM platform and many more
Device/ Platform independent operations; Can be used on mobile and iPads – can be
accessed over iOS, Android, Windows platforms
The team was set up within 40% budget of the strategic supplier quote in India and later
it expanded to other countries with their own budgets
Low Cost of Ownership – $ 250 K Year to Year savings; The CoE payback has been $
1Mn so far
Cost & Complexity Very low OR No customization; easy to maintain and operate
Single source of truth for all analytics requirements The SM tool database is primary
source for all the service related data
Very low cost of upgrade and version maintenance – these upgrades are being done in
10% of the costs of the upgrades of predecessor
The tool, the service, business and technical changes completely managed by the
internal team; All users are clients for the in-house team.
Due to the network of third party suppliers, and no dependency on a single supplier for
Internal Capability services, the enablement to upscale and downscale the team in a faster and agile way
& Knowledge
Retention Knowledge remains within the company – the tool and technical architecture, related
blueprints and designs are owned and maintained by the company Solution Designer.
The in-house team supports the tool which manages approximately 50000 tickets
every month across the Business Services (IT, HR, Finance)

The Turnaround
Technical services suppliers are integral part of
the eco-system we operate in. As a part of this
journey we were able to set up a framework of
third party technology services suppliers who
work in niche technologies. This has helped us
to create a supplier independent service.
Another advantage of this framework was to get
the best resource to develop required user
stories. This has enabled us to upscale and
downscale the team quickly, as required by the
situation. A robust and scalable platform was Graph 3.1: Heavy use of the tool across
created to deliver and manage end-to-end geographies and functions
delivery of IT services, including project
governance and documentation. This platform is
being used across the functions of the
organization (IT, HR, Finance, etc.). A negligible
level of customization was allowed on the tool to
maintain the sanctity of production client. This
has helped in getting the tool version(s)
upgraded under control by reducing cost of
ownership. Further, this gave rise to an in-house
Knowledge Management Platform which could
be converted to Innovation Management
Platform with a small effort.
The team has proven the capability to lead and
be a role model to all the insourcing CoEs in the Graph 3.2: High Customer Satisfaction across
company. functions and geographies

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 41


Graph 3.3: Consistent Incident
performance since last 2 years
What Next?
Following the success of the SM tool CoE,
several possibilities have opened up following
the same principles. Security Operations CoE
and Identity and Access Management CoE are
two areas which are being pursued actively. This
framework is now being promoted as an open
framework by the Open Group organisation to be
used by the wider Service Management
community by customizing and adopting to the
individual needs. The Group has awarded us
Presidents award in the category ‘Innovation and
Resolution Excellence’. They are also planning to create
case study to showcase this achievement. PE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anand Rajhans has over two decades of experience in Information Technology

industry. In his experience he was instrumental in establishing I.T. delivery teams for
large international MNCs in India and Europe. He is an electronics engineer and a
product designer from IIT Mumbai with MBA degree from Erasmus University,
Netherlands.
Anand has demonstrated expertize in end to end implementations of various business
solutions and major transformations to enhance client experience and business
productivity. He has worked with many of the world’s largest brands including Jaguar
Land Rover, Tata Motors, Syngenta, DHL, ABN AMRO, Thomas Cook, Microsoft, Pratt
and Whitney, General Electric, KLM Cargo and many more.
He is also the Winner of the IT Next 100 CIO Award, 2017.

PROCESS EDGE | MARCH 2018 | 42

IN THE LAST 7 YEARS, SSF HAS CREATED A FRATERNITY OF SHARED SERVICES LEADERS IN THE SHARED SERVICES SPACE WHO
ARE DRIVING HIGHEST LEVELS OF ACCOUNTABILITY, INTEGRITY AND PROFESSIONALISM THAT DEFINES OUR INDUSTRY.

2018
SSF IS PARTNERING WITH BRICS CHAMBERS OF
COMMERCE & INDUSTRY TO HOLD THE FIRST EVER HR
2017 LEADERSHIP SUMMIT TO BE HELD ON 27th APRIL

MILESTONES OF SSF FROM 2011 TO APRIL 2018. TO BE CONTD…

RELEASED THE RESEARCH REPORT ON ‘BUILDING
CAPABILITIES FOR THE FUTURE AND CATALYZING
TRANSFORMATION’, PREPARED IN COLLABORATION
WITH EVEREST GROUP 2016
RELEASED BPM PRACTIONERS GUIDE –
‘REBOOTONG BUSINESS PROCESS
STRATEGY TO OUTCOMPETE’
2016
‘BPM ACHIEVER IN GLOBAL INDIA’ AWARDS
TO HONOR EXEMPLARY LEADERS IN THE
SHARED SERVICES SPACE LAUNCHED
2016
LAUNCHED THE FIRST-EVER
‘PROCESS MATURITY MODEL’ (PMM)TM
2015
INITIATED THE FIRST LEADERSHIP INTERACTION EVENT
IN MARCH 2015 FOR A NICHE AUDIENCE OF LEADERS
AND VETERANS, TO BE HELD PERIODICALLY ACROSS 2015
DIFFERENT LOCATIONS IN INDIA A UNIQUE RESEARCH & SURVEY REPORT ON
‘BPM & SHARED SERVICES LANDSCAPE IN
GLOBAL INDIA’ RELEASED

2014
INSTITUTED THE PIONEERING LEADER AWARDS
TO RECOGNIZE AND HONOUR STELLAR
2014
CONTRIBUTIONS BY DISTINGUISHED FIRST EDITION OF THE PERIODICAL SSF
INDIVIDUALS IN SHARED SERVICES SPACE JOURNAL – PROCESS EDGE
– ‘NOT A CHOICE ANYMORE’ UNVEILED

2013
2012
RELEASED FIRST-OF ITS-KIND BPM PUBLICATION
FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND RESEARCH & SURVEY
‘BPM IN GLOBAL INDIA – THE INFLECTION POINT FOR
REPORT ON ‘SHARED SERVICES ADOPTION BY
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE’
INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS’ RELEASED

2011 2011
INSTITUTED SHARED SERVICES EXCELLENCE INITIATED THE ANNUAL CONCLAVE EVENT (HELD
AWARDS FOR ORGANIZATIONS EVERY YEAR) WITH THE 1st NATIONAL SHARED
SERVICES CONCLAVE

BE A PART OF THIS INCREDIBLE JOURNEY WITH SSF. PARTICIPATE AT OUR ANNUAL CONCLAVE AND OTHER EVENTS TO STAY
ABREAST WITH THE CURRENT TRENDS IN THE INDUSTRY, IDEATE WITH VETERANS & PRACTIONERS, PUBLISH THOUGHT
LEADERSHIP, BE RECOGNIZED FOR INNOVATIVE WORK AND EXCELLENCE WITH BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (BPM).
 RvaluE Group is Celebrating
12 Years of
Excellence 12 Years of Excellence
RECOGNIZED AS 20 MOST VALUABLE BUSINESS CONSULTANT COMPANIES!!

RvaluE signifies
‘Realizing Business Value’
THROUGH OUR PROVEN SETTM FRAMEWORK
BPM Pioneers & Team of experienced Practitioners,
Consultants, Facilitators and Coaches, we at RvaluE, offer
niche comprehensive services and solutions covering
Redesign of Business Processes & Offshoring, Developing
Talent and Capabilities of Individuals/ Organization,
Industry Expertise for BPM strategy adoption, execution,
transformation, technology and enhancements and
Innovative Solutions for Operations across Indian /
Overseas Organizations, Shared Service Centres and the
BPM Ecosystem

OUR SERVICE SPECTRUM

Converting Support
Functions to Line
Functions
(F&A, HR, IT, SCM, Ops.,…)
DOMAINS

Sustain Global Standards of Service Excellence

Realize Full Potential of BP Services
Become Strategic Consultants to Corporates

What is the
Industry
Consultants Review, Jan 2016
saying
CFO India Magazine
about us…

Recognized as 20 Most Valuable 25 Most Promising Business Consultants

Business Consultant Companies in India, Consultants Review, Dec 2014 MAIL TODAT, December
2017

Phone: +91-11-2667 4814, +91-11-26674920 I Mobile: +91-9958840404

Email ID: contact@rvalueconsulting.com
www.rvaluebs.com I www.rvaluels.in I www.sharedservicesforum.in 42
 Disclaimer
© 2018 Shared Services Forum

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior
written permission of the copyright owners. Shared Services Forum has made every effort to ensure the
accuracy of information presented in this document. However neither organization nor its office bearers,
analysts, or employees can be held responsible for any financial consequences arising from the use of
information provided herein. In case if any views, perspectives, discrepancies or errors, please write to:

contact@sharedservicesforum.in
www.sharedservicesforum.in