Any company can become BIC; it’s all about wanting to be one

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It’s 8 am and I am holed up in this hotel in Singapore. My flight to India is scheduled at 10.30 am and that gives me just about the right time to get to the airport and go through the rigmarole of the check-in formalities. I should have started earlier, however, an early morning call with folks in Australia held me back and I lost track of time. I call up the front desk to organise for a check-out and inform about the flight that I have to take.

As I get to the front desk, I am pleased to see the executive handing over to me the final invoice which was spot on and asking me to sign on some papers to close the formalities. What impressed me was the few other services that they extended without me asking for them – a cab was organised (which, in my hurry, I had missed informing them about), a bottle of water, a newspaper and a big smile assuring me that I will catch the flight.

On my way to the airport, I started to think, “Why can’t all hotels provide this level of service? Can these services not be replicated by other hotels?” What does it take to be the Best in Class (BIC)?

Let’s get into the business of IT services and business process management. Companies are constantly working on improving their business processes and a majority of the companies speak about getting to the top right quadrant in performance – highly efficient and effective – in the business processes and functions that they manage. Future forward the discussion a couple of years from now, and yet, the discussions tend to remain similar.

While there are companies who are able to get to the top right quadrant, what is holding back the other companies? In today’s world of hyper connectivity, knowledge can be ‘Googled’ and ‘Wikied’. It can also be acquired by hiring the best of the talent across the globe and by hiring the same talent from those BIC companies.

The top right quadrant companies would have gotten there by leveraging an evolutionary best practice approach or a revolutionary industry disrupting methods. In the evolutionary way – there is only a finite way of doing things – the measures, the tools and the practices. All of it revolves around the people, process and technology.

If it is finite like in the case of the hotel industry, can the other organisations not replicate the practices? Sounds simplistic but also poses a question, why then some do better than the others, while few do way better than the rest?

I believe that these are a few fundamental reasons driving this:

Wanting to be the BIC – many companies want to be this, however, focuses on the ‘core’ of the business processes i.e., the revenue earning side while the business enabling typically comes lower down the priority. However, every business process exists for a reason – to achieve one bit that finally adds to the larger product and service that the company delivers. A strong message from the top and consistently percolating to the whole organisation is critical to galvanise the whole company towards driving change across all areas of the business

Willing to let go of the old – companies need to accept that yesterday’s skills are not what is required for today and today’s are not what is required for the future. People have to constantly learn and evolve while the tools and practices have to shed the old and make way for the new. The ‘viability’ is an important element, however, companies need to challenge themselves to make it happen. The most disruptive ideas of the past decade have been from start-up organisations that do not come with a baggage of doing things in a particular way – Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, etc.

Adapt the outside thinking to the relevant industry and context – there are no two business processes that are alike. A deep understanding of the business and what is relevant to the situation is what is important to make it work

Bring in innovation – a mindset of challenging the status quo is a critical element to drive an innovative mindset. The right mix of ‘startup’ culture – bold, disruptive, quick, flexible iterative along with ‘big company’ culture – teams, process, business case. This brings in the right balance of innovative mindset and structured approach.

Companies or business processes that have all the above ingredients get to it sooner than the rest.

Will we see more front desks impressing us? Will we see more business processes getting towards the top right quadrant?

- By Madhukar Tata, Strategic Business Practice Head – Business Transformation Services

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.