Volume VIIi | Issue I | JANUARY-MARCH 2016
Boosting productivity @ mjunction By Atin Banerjee, Head, Automation
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ver the past few months, several projects have been undertaken engaging crossfunctional teams to work on them. While the objective being uniform for each of the projects – “To do more with less”, it aimed to achieve one or more of the following. • Simplification of processes and systems • Increasing productivity • Reduction of costs • Increase of customer satisfaction A few of such initiatives are: Directly Responsible Individual (DRI): The DRI concept in not new to the industry. Widely practised at Apple Inc., it aims to make people directly accountable for tasks. In the context of our organization, various business critical meetings are conducted. Tracking the outcomes and following up with the owners of the same, is an established pain point. To address this, a DRI module has been built on myportal, which is our Intranet. Using this module, Heads of departments can create action points and assign them to DRI(s) with timelines. Upon assignment, an intimation mail will be sent by the system to the DRI. Once the DRI has confirmed his/ her acceptance of the point on the system, regular updates and tracking will be possible online. The system will send auto-mailers following
up with the DRI till closure of the point. Comprehensive dashboard/ reports are also available for the users regarding the points. Extra Miles Service: In order to better harness the productivity of the existing workforce, the extra miles module has been conceptualized and implemented on myportal. The idea has been to cut across organizationally and make available work tasks for the entire employee base on a voluntary basis. Any BU/ FU may publish a task on the board which is open for all employees to show interest to work upon. The tasks are intended to be generic in nature without need for any specific skill sets. The publisher can pick
from among the respondents and system based workflows will take the task to completion. This project has been able to leverage the Internet to allow work to be done on tasks, irrespective of locations, levels and reporting relationships. Modification of Travel Process: This project was undertaken to simplify the existing processes, whereby the process to approve travel requests has been streamlined. We have also migrated to a practice of self-certification of bills, and a 30-day window has been stipulated for settlement of travel-related expense. Virtual Meeting Room: This has been an IT-enabled intervention to cut down on unproductive time spent in coordinating physical meetings. The convenience of setting up and joining a meeting can be taken from a junctionite’s own workstation. With zero hassles of reserving meeting rooms, virtual meeting rooms are there for all to explore and leverage. Connectivity with branches: This had been an area of concern leading to poor productivity of our workforce. This has been addressed both for our branch and client locations Identification of IT-Assets: An enterprise wide initiative had been launched to uniquely tag and identify all IT assets. This will now help the IT Infrastructure team to monitor and provide better support to all internal stakeholders.
Big bucks in technology transfer from Academics to Industry Rajkumar Mitra of Knowledge Management & Innovation, attended a CII seminar titled “Innovation 2016”. He encapsulates his learnings in this article.
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echnology transfer from Academics to Industry is emerging as a game changing business proposition and reputed academic institutions are adopting blue ocean strategy to become early movers in this area. Obviously the strategy is being adopted in countries where the Academics and Industry are not well connected and this brings out a great opportunity for Indian entrepreneurs. This came out from the day long discussion in the seminar titled “Innovation 2016” organised by Confederation of Indian Industry on February 27, 2016 who have tried to utilize this platform to bring Academics and Industry under one roof. In one of the sessions, Dr Rakesh Roshan, Deputy head of Technology Transfer, University of Oxford, said that reputed Universities have started allocating big money to such initiative and are being richly rewarded. A case in point was Oxford University itself which has rapidly reached an annual turnover of £23.5 million in 2015 from a meagre turnover of £15,000 in 2001, he said. “We have around INR 3200 cr fund at our disposal and we are targeting to roll out 20 spin outs to encash the opportunity this year,” Dr Roshan said. Incidentally, Dr Roshan is serving as board member of several spin out or start-up companies and one such company established last year was
being sold at £20 million for the value it generated to its customers. This model of technology transfer of incubating an idea at Oxford University and transferring it to a spin out company would not have happened unless a professional body involved in the process. This is where Dr Roshan finds an opportunity, as academic institutions are normally shy to approach industries with their idea. University of Oxford technology transfer team having good relation with the Industry is therefore encashing on the shyness to make good licensing revenue, said Dr Roshan. To ensure the right approach, existing relationship of Academics and Industry has to be well understood and therefore graded into 5 levels. In India, mostly the relationship is in Level 1, but in some mature pockets, the relationship is in level 4, Dr Roshan said. The lowest grade of shyness is Level 1 where Academics and Industry are miles apart in terms of relationship. This state is TTG1 according to Dr Roshan. After Industries are encouraged to use some Academics idea, the relationship matures to TTG2 relationship. In TTG3, government starts to take active interests and drafts necessary policy to build up necessary ecosystem. In TTG4, funds are allocated to facilitate the technology transfer. TTG5 is yet to be reached and this is
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an ecosystem addressing the gaps of TTG4 according to Dr Roshan. India is also keen to avail the opportunity. According to Mr Talleen Kumar, Principal Secretary, Department of Information Technology & Electronics, Government of West Bengal, 9 areas have been identified where technology transfer is required. They are in Big Data, Reality Experience, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Biotechnology, Energy Efficiency, Cyber Security, High End Computing Technology and Class 1 problem area. Class 1 problem areas are needs where scientists do not say “No” but technology has not reached to that level to deliver, explained Kumar in his speech. These areas are not unknown to the leading Academic Institution in the Indian subcontinent according to Dr Ajoy Kr Ray, Director, Indian Institute of Engineering and Technology, Shibpur. “We are getting funded internationally but waiting to be funded by domestic industries to provide solutions,” he said. The education structure of India also needs to be revamped to avail this opportunity, said Dr Dhrubajyoti Chattopadhyay, Vice-Chancellor, Amity University, Kolkata who was previously the Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University. Current education system turns the questioning minds of students to answering minds, he said. This culture needs to be reversed to avail the emerging opportunity, Chattopadhyay said.