Podcast Audio Transcript
Mimi: Hello listeners, this is Mimi; thank you for tuning in to yet another exciting and informative podcast from us at Infosys BPM. Today, we are discussing about achieving goals with efficiency and effectiveness. And to talk about this, we have here with us, Binaya K Behera, AVP & Head of Quality at Infosys BPM. Welcome Binaya. How are you?
Binaya: I’m doing great, Mimi. Thank you for having me on this podcast.
Mimi: It’s a pleasure.
Binaya, to start with, when it comes to achieving operational excellence, what is the right mindset or approach that you follow and recommend?
Binaya: That’s quite a relevant question Mimi. Creating the right mindset is key to any operational excellence initiative.
Operational excellence requires the involvement and engagement of all employees. Encouraging collaboration and teamwork can help identify the right problems and solve those, to drive continuous improvement.
Operational excellence is ultimately about delivering high-quality products and services to customers. Therefore, it is important to have a customer-focused mindset, where you are constantly seeking to empathize with and meet the needs of your customers.
Additionally, adopting a Lean mindset focused on reducing waste, increasing speed and agility, is essential to achieve operational excellence. These principles involve identifying and eliminating non-value-adding activities, streamlining processes, and continuously improving efficiency.
When it comes to driving excellence, a holistic quality model, such as our Process Progression Model, that enables innovations and value enhancement along with a robust governance mechanism, is key. Our Process Progression Model has 3 key steps:
- Firstly, noiseless processes to make business operations more stable.
- Secondly, process excellence, which allows us to put operations on autopilot mode through our deep domain expertise.
- Thirdly, we focus on end-to-end transformation of business outcomes through a combination of continuous improvement and scalability.
Mimi:Yes, we need a very comprehensive and all-inclusive model.
Goal orientation is quite important to achieve good results as well. Can you talk about how you enable this in your organization?
Binaya: Infosys as an organization drives a process improvement culture to build smart and simple processes in collaboration with clients. We use integrated frameworks and methodologies to bring a proactive approach to orient towards achieving goals. We aim to consistently improve efficiency and effectiveness to achieve superior customer experience.
Superior processes lead to superior results. The first step to build superior processes is to set up a measurement system to assess the current state of the process. The next step is to define a goal in collaboration with the client and create a roadmap to move from the current state to the desired state.
Structured governance is crucial to build and sustain momentum and to create agile and robust business processes, which in turn lead to proactive goal orientation. To enable proactive goal orientation in an organization, it is important to create a culture and environment that supports and encourages proactive behaviour.
Mimi: Absolutely, I can see the benefits of having a structured and proactive approach.
An important question we have is about the removal of constraints and challenges while improving efficiency. How do you achieve this?
Binaya: Good question, Mimi.
As the first step towards removing constraints and achieving efficiency, we strive to build stability into transactions. This is achieved by establishing metrics and then conducting the failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to identify specific areas of failure in processes. We implement process controls and conduct thorough process audits to mitigate any risks. Further, we conduct root cause analysis (RCA) and corrective and preventive actions (CAPA) to drive continuous improvement of processes.
In the next stage, we achieve better process stability by replicating best practices, implementing a structured approach to manage changes, through data and process capability analysis.
Lastly, we aim for predictability that leads to operational maturity, by implementing an integrated approach for improvements using Six Sigma and Lean methodologies; and focusing on outcomes using predictive models.
Mimi:The success of your approach is the best testimony. As they say the proof is in the pudding.
Could you tell us about some of your achievements in this context?
Binaya: Absolutely. As the best testimony to our success, Infosys BPM won the “Best Business Process Excellence Program” award at the National Quality Excellence Awards, in 2015. In 2018, we won the NASSCOM award in the “Return of Investment” category. These are only a few of the major quality awards that we have bagged over time.
For our clients, we have managed to deliver over $74 million in benefits through automation. Over 11,000 Six Sigma + Lean projects have been driven since 2005.
We have built a quality-oriented culture within the organization which helps us aim higher every time.
Mimi:It’s so great to hear that your quality-focused approach has managed to bring so much success. Thank you Binaya for coming to our podcast and having this conversation.
Binaya: It was a pleasure, Mimi.
Mimi: Dear listeners, if you enjoyed our podcast today, please don’t forget to share and like it on social media. Our social handles are mentioned in the podcast page. The podcast will be available on various platforms like Google Podcasts and Spotify, in addition to our website.
Also, if you have any queries, do reach out to us through the email address on the podcast description. Watch this space for more exciting podcasts coming up. Once again, thank you for tuning in, stay safe, sharp, and healthy. Have a nice day!
