Crafting Collective Opportunities for COOs to Share and Learn
20 January, 2023It's been a busy season for 'The COO Collective', the exclusive, by-invite-only club of thought-leading COOs within the country. This dynamic initiative by ServiceNow, in partnership with Forbes India, has brought together a constellation of luminaries from the COO universe, at a series of events across the country, so that they can discuss and deliberate emerging trends, challenges, solutions and opportunities that they and their peers face in these times of transition.
The maiden discussion of the series, held in Chennai, was themed 'Unlocking Growth by Investing in CX'. The panellists comprised industry frontrunners, including Jayraj Shanmugam, COO, BIAL; S. Prakash, MD & COO, Star Health; Abhishek Sinha, COO, L&T Technology Services; Rubal Sahni and Regional Director, ServiceNow. Moderated by Paromita Chatterjee, they explored how organizations could rethink their operating model to devise systems and processes, which could deliver an intelligent customer experience. While they were in consensus on the fact that investment in CX is a must, they took on the moot question of how much investment is enough and how they must prioritise channels for investment.
The COO Collective then hosted a discussion in Pune on 'Enabling Transformation through Technology Excellence'. Once again, the panel comprised trail-blazing COOs from the corporate world - Vineet Bahal, COO & SVP, Delivery & Operations, Nihilent Analytics; Feroz Sheikh, Chief Information and Digital Officer, Syngenta Group; Sandeep Kinkar, Vice President Manufacturing Operations, Praj Industries and Elisha Harrington, Innovation Officer, ServiceNow.
With enterprises pursuing transformations to increase agility and keep pace with evolving technology and customer expectations, corporates sometimes find that meeting the technical demands of modern digital-native architectures can be a challenge due to the lack of a structured and standardized approach to prioritizing technical excellence during application development. The panel shared their experiences of how technical excellence focuses on operational aspects, such as performance, reliability and cost, and narrated use cases from their respective domains. They also discussed the critical role that employees play in a successful transition and how they must constantly be equipped with up-skilling and reskilling opportunities.
Next, the discussions move back to the South, with the theme for deliberation being 'Optimize Employee Experience To Boost Bottom Line'. The eminent speakers included Dharmendra Jain, CFO & HR Head, Yash Technologies; Amit Mitra, COO, Broadridge Financial Solutions; Hari Vellore, CEO, ESAF Small Finance Bank; Dr. Guruvayurappan PV, Chief Human Resource Officer, Omega Healthcare and Manoj Kumar Brahmanayagam, Head - Employee Workflow Solution Sales, India, ServiceNow.
The participants dissected the unprecedented changes in the relationship between employees and employers in the past two years and the critical need to improve employee experience, particularly as digital transformations gain momentum. They focussed on how organizational goals can create tailored, authentic experiences, strengthen employee purpose, ignite energy and elevate organization-wide performance. As the discussion closed, the panellists were unanimous in their conviction that having a unified employee experience, which harmonizes people, processes and technology, could enhance overall productivity and improve bottom lines.
'Operational Excellence - Optimizing People, Processes & Assets' was the next theme for discussion at an event held at Mumbai. In keeping with its track record of the previous discussions, The COO Collective pulled together some of the brightest minds from the sector to share their insights on the new benchmarks and definition for success in the corporate world.
The panel, comprising Sameer Bendre, Chief of Operations, Persistent Systems; Arjun Vaidyanathan, COO, KPMG; Naozer Dalal, Deputy CEO, Conneqt Business Solutions and Harsh Parekh, Co-Founder, Ascent Health & Wellness Solutions, offered their views on how organizations are now being evaluated on their ability to reduce costs and run their operations efficiently, communicate to stakeholders a commitment to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives and demonstrate that the organization is resilient. Beyond these criteria, they pointed out that forward looking businesses also seek business efficiently at scale.
In this era of digital omnipresence, where change is constant and instant, these panel discussions have been much appreciated by both the participants and the audience as it gives them an opportunity to share their learning with well-respected peers and gain from their experiences as well.