By Anuj Bhalla, President & Global Head – Integrated Cloud and Delivery Excellence, Tech Mahindra
Over the last decade, the cost of delivery and delivery excellence has become the most critical factor in running successful and popular businesses worldwide. As businesses accelerate their digital transformation journeys, service providers need to use various cutting-edge Delivery Excellence models and tools with a relentless focus on automation to offer best-in-class and tailor-made solutions.
Today, it is essential to be sustainably agile and that can be done by fostering a mindset of continuous improvement and accountability. This means embracing agility as a culture, mindset, and operating model— that permeates every aspect of an organization’s operations, from product development and manufacturing to customer service and support. Simply put, it takes a significant investment of resources, commitment, and leadership to truly achieve excellence in business delivery.
‘No-Compromise’ strategies for achieving delivery excellence:
- Mapping Goals, Understanding the Terrain: To gain a comprehensive understanding of the current architecture, validating the documentation of the customer’s IT landscape, identifying bottlenecks, and evaluating capacity & scalability, is important. This requires establishing robust governance processes which support clear objectives based on customer requirements, following the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound). Communicating these objectives to customers to foster alignment and focus on mutually agreed outcomes is equally necessary. Finally, adopting a ‘do it right the first time’ approach is crucial to avoid disruptions and maintain a strong customer-service provider relationship.
- Optimizing Costs, Embracing Technology: Innovation and optimization are the cornerstones of sustained success for organizations. To meet the ever-changing demands effectively, organizations need agile, scalable, flexible, and optimized IT infrastructures. For instance, leveraging scalable cloud solutions can eliminate redundancy, improve work efficiency, and help organizations take advantage of cost-effective pricing models. Implementing energy-efficient practices like server virtualization, cooling optimization, and power management techniques can help reduce operational costs. Moreover, optimizing vendor contracts and negotiations can help secure favorable terms and cost efficiency in partnerships. Most importantly, adopting agile and adaptive methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban, and Lean can enhance project delivery efficiency, reduce waste, minimize the risk of cost overruns, and enable faster product delivery with higher quality.
- Empower. Collaborate. Excel: To thrive amidst emerging IT trends and maintain a strong competitive edge, it is essential to promote collaborative synergy by breaking down silos and encouraging seamless cross-functional collaboration through an open culture of operational excellence. Furthermore, fostering a culture of continuous learning to enhance skills and domain expertise can not only elevate the workforce but also result in increased customer satisfaction. In totality, all of this can help cultivate a high-performance culture and create unparalleled excellence in employees.
- Measure the KPIs and Mitigate the Risks: Defining the quantifiable metrics to monitor and evaluate performance is essential. For this, businesses must implement a structured system to collect delivery data, including lead time, cycle time, and defect rate, to gain insights into delivery efficiency. Additionally, regularly analyzing the collected data can help identify areas for improvement and aid in focusing on specific aspects that require attention and optimization. Further, developing strategies and initiatives to address the identified improvement areas, such as process optimization, resource allocation, training, or technology enhancements, can help accelerate enhanced delivery excellence.
- Continuously monitoring the impact and establishing robust quality assurance mechanisms, i.e., implementing quality control measures, conducting regular audits, and monitoring key performance indicators to ensure that products and services consistently are on track, can further aid in identifying areas for improvement.
Delivery excellence is crucial for success in any business or project. By focusing on continuous improvement, effective communication, efficient processes, and proactive problem-solving, organizations can achieve delivery excellence and gain a competitive edge in the market. It is an ongoing effort that requires dedication, collaboration, and a customer-centric mindset.
