Event:          BEST PRACTICES SUMMIT
Date:           15th December, 2006
Venue:         Russian Cultural Centre, Chennai
Participants:  Corporates & Students of IIPM & Other B-Schools

Event Description with details of the event:

"The Best Practices Summit", was conceived as a conclave, aimed at bringing together some of the best performers in the corporate world to unveil their organizational best practices. The event allowed the corporate entities to share their secrets of excellence in various functions of business and management.  A session-wise account of the power-packed panel discussions is given below.

Chief Guest’s inaugural address:
The Best Practices Summit kicked off at the Russian Cultural Centre with the lighting of the lamp by the chief guest, Mr. Stansilav Simakov, Vice Consul, Consulate General of Russia, and Director, Russian Centre of Science and Culture. His five-minute address focused on macro economic parameters and global best practices.  Mr. Simakov began his speech by talking about the trade relationship between India and Russia. Mr. Simakov said that the humanitarian and economic links between the two countries are deep rooted and hoped they would get further strengthened. He stated that great opportunities existed for sharing best practices in the fields of biotechnology, medicine, mining, software, aeronautical engineering, etc.

Session 1:
The impressive power packed panel discussion sessions started with the key perspectives of best practitioners from the industry.  Mr. V. Suresh, Senior V.P., Corporate Sales, Naukri.com, began with the concept that ‘best practices’ means ‘innovation’ at Naukri.Com.
Mr. Debojit Choudhury V.P., Planman Consulting highlighted how ‘best practices’ revolves around people -- recruiting, retaining and rewarding the best people as well as good succession planning to ensure perpetual implementation of best practices.  Mr. T. Suresh, Associate V.P. – HR, TAFE, wonderfully brought out in his articulation, how innovation and out-of-the-box thinking, form the key differentiator as best practices. Drawing upon examples of best practices followed at Tata Steel, Wipro and Smithkline Beecham with respect to Leadership Development Programmes, Mr. Suresh spoke about the importance of benchmarking and continuous learning as well.  Dr. K. Thirugnanam, Former Director, U S Technology, focused on Change Management and spoke about some best practices of Polaris.  Mr. Arogiya Sagayaraj, Manager-HR, KPMG, elucidated how quality processes, and talent are the key to determining best practices.

Session 2:
The first session seemed to have warmed the entire proceedings for the second session to really flare-up the debates and discussions to new heights. Mr. Bhaswar Mukherjee, Director, Bridge Point, dwelt on implementation of some corporate best practices drawing from his experiences of going through the HSBC’s 8-bit core values system and Rotary Club’s 4-way test, while highlighting the relevance of Kaplan’s Balance Scorecard. Mr. V.Krishnamurthy, Head-HR, Sundaram InfoTech re-iterated how important it was for smaller organizations to customize the best practices of industry leaders like TCS or CTS, while benchmarking. Mr. A. Wilson Anthony, Senior Manager, HR, TCS, showcased TCS as a best practices organization. Highlighting novel initiatives like Open House, Initial Learning Programme, Campus Connect and the PEEP programme at TCS, Mr. Wilson described how such measures have managed to bridge the gap between the individual’s assessment and the organization’s assessment of his potential. Mr. V. Sudhakar Rao, Manager Staffing, Kanbay, talked about how execution is the key in best practices. Speaking about Kanbay’s acquisition by Cap Gemini, he showed the importance of issues like culture, product delivery, client permission, security, and other nuances involved in sharing best practices of merged and acquired entities.

Session 3:
A befitting grand crescendo was the session that commenced after a delicious lunch that opened with Mr. Shankar S. Iyer, G.M.-Sales, Hutch, speaking about implementing best practices by starting with oneself –i.e. the individual first.  Mr. G. Gopalan, Director, Ondeo Nalco India Ltd., stated the need for a continuous process improvement initiative, while Mr. B .Venkataramana, VP- HR, Reliance Retail, dwelt on the benchmarking issues, while also showcasing Reliance as a best practices organization.  Mr. G.S Ramesh, Sr. V.P. - HR, Hyundai Motor India, took the entire panel discussion and the audience to top gear by introducing concepts like ‘best attitude’, ‘survival of the fastest’ etc. and advocated  ‘implementation of the 5C’s and the 4D’s for success’. He stressed on the need for budding managers to utilize their own business brains and dump the ‘copy-paste’ approach to problem solving. He spoke about the need to prove to the world that Indians can be successful with their own ‘we can do it’ attitude. Taking the example of Hyundai he showed how we could offer global multinational benchmarks and confidence to international players. He reminded the audience that Chennai was becoming the preferred global manufacturing hub now. The audience also got thrilled after listening to some of the excellent employee-oriented best practices at Hyundai.  Mr. D. Charles, VP-Brand, Hello FM, spoke about the need to incorporate freedom and ethics apart from hierarchy in the process of implementing best practices in organizations.

Concluding Session:
In his concluding speech, Prof. R. Krishnan Dean Academics, IIPM, thanked the chief guest, all the eminent panelists, the sponsors, event managers, and participants from the corporate world, academia and student community. Incisive questioning by IIPMites, Mr. Lenin Chakravarthy, Ms. Nidhi Dilip Singh and Prof. Vijay Krishnamurthy, who anchored the panel discussions as terrific moderators, as well as mind-tickling interactions from the corporate and student participants from the audience, left the entire august gathering completely spell-bound, and asking for more!