IMR JAN 2013 - Indira Institutes

Seth Consultantsdelegated these matters to the specialistdepartments. It is you collectively who arenow assessing new requests for proposaland forwarding them for processing. You donot need to be told that all the growthplanned can come about only if we have theright attitude and involvement of allpersonnel. All employees were instructed indetail about the new product developmentprogrammes and in fact those tasks weredelegated to the departments and teamsover a year ago. I would be very unhappy ifanyone says that they have completed all thework assigned to his or her department orteam. This simple means that you have notidentified enough growth opportunities tomake sure that all resources are fullyengaged. The responsibility for identifyingnew business lies with each and every one ofus: with each member of every department,project or business, and in particular theDepartment Heads. Nor will we accept it as agenuine reason if any department or projectteam identifies a lack of manpower as areason for not being able to achieve theirtargets.In fact let me make it clear, achievement ofthe targets set by the chairman is ofparamount importance. I do not wish tooffend anyone, but, it has been observed thatmany of our employees are very careful totake full benefit – that is to say – to fully availof the leave that they are allowed and itperhaps time to reconsider that issue. If youhave time to go on leave then you cannot saythat you did not have enough time ormanpower to achieve your targets.In a related development, we have alsodecided to institute some new initiatives inorder to bring SPCL on par with the practicesof our most renowned competitors.Henceforth we will have a new billingprocedure. Instead of billing on the basis ofman-hours as is currently being done, the topmanagement was of the view that billingshould be done on the basis of man-days withthe minimum billing unit being half a manday.The procedure for the billing calculationhas also been revised in order ensure that thebilling amount remains more or lesscomparable under the new norms, and toprevent abuse of the process so that clientswill not start complaining that it is just a backdoor way to increase the billed amount.I think that I may disclose to you that therewas a heated discussion about theimplementation of the new billingprocedures. Everyone present from theChairman downward to the DepartmentHeads had strong views. Finally agreementwas reached. In any case the new billingprocedures would have to be adopted sooneror later. However, ultimately it was decided tointroduce the new billing procedures from thecurrent year, with the following provisos: (i)the new billing procedures would be appliedto all new clients; (ii) for existing clients andexisting projects, following the current billingprocedures might cause confusion; and (iii)for the first year it is up to the departmentsconcerned to decide which billing proceduresthey wish to follow.Finally, after much thought, one of the newproduct development teams has come up witha suggestion. I would like all of you to considerthis suggestion without any preconceivednotions or prejudices as it has great potentialto be a money-spinner, even though it mightseem counter intuitive. There is great demandfor certification programmes, which I can76 Indira Management Review - Jan 2013