From Traditional Quality to Value Enabler - A Paradigm Shift

Service Knowledge Base held a session on Traditional Quality to Value Enabler on 29th April. Featured speaker was Parvathy Satish, Mavenir Systems Group Director

The speaker began the session by taking attendees through the evolution of quality from Quality Control to Internal Auditing to ISO Certification, and from Continuous Improvement to Delivery Lead, Operational Excellence to Program Management and Operations

After that, Core Quality was explored, including top-down, leadership mandates, setting up objectives, compliance & effectiveness, management reviews, and audits & certifications.

As Business Priorities Change, maintaining and continuous investing becomes a challenge. It becomes Second Nature to work better, quality is an afterthought

What is the best way for Quality to renew this? Managing Change through the Quality Team, moving beyond ISO Certification and Compliance to help others succeed is one way. Start small and involve all stakeholders. Manage Change Management Initiatives as projects, measure metrics. Scale once benefits are visible and buy-in is achieved

Speaker shared examples of what Quality can do to enable value? Facilitating SWOT Analysis for Business & Technology Teams, Setting Priorities & Objectives based on Customer Feedback and Improving Employee Productivity by setting time and agenda for meetings. It may be assigned by senior management or self-assigned

This is best achieved by Quality due to its eye for improvement, knowledge of what is happening in the organization, and role as the organisation's eyes and ears

To accomplish this, quality personnel need to be able to adapt, have learnability & be open to trying anything different, ready to learn on "GO" & deliver. Quality should understand how business models work

What is the best way to transition to this? You can begin by asking for the role, asking how you can add value, establishing rapport with new stakeholders, and identifying people willing to take risks

You should upskill/reskill during the transition process, give yourself time to learn a new way of working, its tools, and domain, think your work enables the organisation, take stock, and finally give yourself a pat on the back. Allow things time to get in shape without fretting, taking pressure or being too hard on yourself

The importance of quality goes beyond sponsorships. Quality involves business, finance & people, making the right choices at the right time, ROI, margins, the ability to build competencies, the number of iterations a release needs, the number of customer deployments or returns, and the transparency of the organization in terms of data and information management. Speaker highlighted these as key takeaways from value enabled thinking

In closing, the speaker highlighted new areas where quality can add value, such as cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, sustainability reporting, and intelligent analytics.

Key Takeaways from Opening Doors to Possibilities, a LinkedIn Live Event by Sau Yong (S.Y.), Chin & Adeline Tiah

Opening Doors to Possibilities REINVENTING Our Lives & Work: A LinkedIn Live Event was hosted by Sau - Yong (S.Y.) Chin on 30th March. A Leadership & REINVENT Coach & Author, Adeline Tiah spoke. 

This talk shared insights on how to increase our chances of realizing our best selves, not only by opening, but by creating new doors.

Reinvent stands for:

R - Risk Taking Mindset

E - Entrepreneurial Thinking

I - Inclusiveness

N - Noticeable

V - Vulnerable

E - Empathy

N - Networking skills

T - Trans-disciplinary learning

Just like software versions, reinvention is a journey of multiple career upgrades

Reimagining is a marathon, a journey for longevity, not a race for the top

There is no constant change, only exponential

Rather than climbing ladders, future workers will build career ladders

It's not how hard you work that determines your pay, but how hard you are to replace

In the market, hybrid skills will command a 20% premium

Looking for a job should be like looking for a business opportunity, rather than looking at a JD; think about problems you can solve, value you can bring

Don't be afraid to fail when reinventing yourself. Don't set unrealistic expectations, just do your best

The ability to recognize when to take short strategic breaks, rest & recharge, is vital to reinvention

The concept of transdisciplinary learning means learning skills outside your domain, which is very important in the current situation. It involves learning complementary skill sets, creating an overlap to create a niche

Be intentional when learning trans-disciplinary skills, look for opportunities to apply the skills learned & monetise it i.e. are people willing to pay you for it (in-demand skills)

In life, you need to take strategic risks & venture outside of your comfort zone. Be entrepreneurial by seeing the possibilities and taking risks instead of seeing road blocks. Mentality matters.

The move that matters the most is the next step taken

You learn, you learn, you relearn, and you get stronger

To embrace a growth mindset, we must be aware, accept, and adapt (adjust).

Adeline concluded by saying that Arnold Schwarzennegger is a great example of Reinvention, as he started out as a body builder, reinvented himself as a leading Hollywood actor, later served as governor for two terms and is now a keynote speaker.

Always strive to be an improved version of yourself. Take that first step and unlock new possibilities

Gaining Competitive Edge Through Holistic Digital Transformation

Service Knowledge Base hosted a session on Gaining Competitive Edge through Holistic Digital Transformation on 25th March. Speaker was Sujatha Sivaraman, a Digital Transformation Evangelist

The following are the key takeaways from the program

We are more in the Digital space now & that is the reason why we are looking at Digital Transformation. Any transformation requires inner transformation first. Embrace technology & simplify life by being digital. 

Current challenges faced from an employee perspective are Learning, Stagnating Income, Outdated Technologies, Office Politics, Shaky Economy, Lack of Differentiation. Solution to overcome them lies in your commitment to upskilling, investment in yourself, how you are creating visibility, differentiating yourself, your emotional quotient, how you work

From a Business Perspective, Legacy Technology & Applications, Investments not channeled in the right direction, product or service differentiation, customer & employees dissatisfaction are some of the challenges faced. The Solution lies in having a digital vision driven by Leadership i.e. to be a digital first architecture company. Any business needs to be a digital business. There has to be a digital presence.

Examples of Blockbuster, Kodak, Blackberry were discussed wherein it was seen that their inability to transform to the Market needs, rigidity in not going with the technology shift, led to it’s downfall.

Digital leadership starts with an inspiring vision to drive transformative change through the power of technology, use of digital technology that leads to beneficial business outcomes.

Holistic Digital Transformation refers to Total Experience, Combination of Technology, Combination of Process, Multitude of Factors that helps the business to survive.

All sectors have to be digitally enabled else they will risk losing out to competition. Same is applicable to individual employees as well.

The different maturity levels of digital transformation are

• Digitization - At the transaction level, improvements, etc.

• Digitalization - At the project or functional unit level

• Digital Transformation - At the line of business, enterprise level wherein all the multiple units come together, there is coherency

Some of the different terminologies in digital transformation are 

• Change refers to version / upgrading

• Innovation refers to novel or better way of doing things e.g. Embedded Finance

• Transformation, entire company is changing holistically leading to accelerated transformation metamorphosis, become a fitter enterprise

For Digital Transformation to be enabled, to happen, the entire operational functions value stream has to be aligned i.e. logistics, recruitment, marketing, HR, IT, Administration functions

The First Principles of Digital Transformation are Multi-Functionality, Multi Channel, Ease of Use, Straight through processing & value delivery

Skills required for Digital Transformation are multiple, one skill dedicated specialist is losing charm. V-shaped skills are required for Digital Transformation i.e. being specialist in one area backed by strong complimentary skillsets

Digital Transformation is 

• IT innovation aligned with business goals. It is not Adopting technology for the sake of using it.

• both technological and cultural shift and not just digitalization of business process

• leveraging the technology that adds value and not using the latest technology and gadgets

• creating new business models and opportunities and not minor adjustments to existing processes

• A fundamental company - wide initiative and not a single project, department or business line

• A long-term process requiring a well planned strategy and not a short term tactic or one-time fix

It is estimated that by 2025, the Digital Transformation Market will be 1009 Billion $ with a CAGR of 16.5% (Source: Markets & Markets Publication)

A successful digital transformation requires to have a Pilot, Scale & Accelerate or Adapt by Crawl, Walk & Run Strategy.

Conclusion: Become a vital person & not just a functional person by looking a multiple technologies, having an innovative mindset, looking at synergy of technologies

A data driven approach to quality improvement

Service Knowledge Base hosted a session on Data-Driven Quality Improvement Process on 7th January with Amit Choudhary, Senior Advisor, Data Analytics Solution Expert, KPMG.

Data-driven quality has replaced customer experience-based quality. While organizations may initially lose customers in this transition process, they will have made a foundation for acquiring a larger number of customers in the long run. The essence of data-driven process improvement can be summed up in this sentence.

Data-driven decision-making is best achieved by using the Question, Plan, Collect, Analyze, Recommend method that ultimately converts data into insights that lead to the formulation of action plans, such as improving service quality, product quality, customer satisfaction, etc.

Data-driven project management has the advantage of bringing about plenty of cost optimization. A data-driven approach can help study the impact of a project internally and externally to the organization, thereby improving project risk management.

Leveraging data can help leverage the strategy by dynamically updating short-term plans that contribute to the overall long-term strategy. An organization that uses data will be more agile and faster since it will be driven by data. An analysis of the project at different stages can enhance business performance by being data-driven.

A data-driven organization can be formed by combining Descriptive Analytics (what happened? ), Diagnostic Analytics (why did it happen? ), Predictive Analytics (what will happen?), and Prescriptive Analytics (how do we make it happen?)

There were case studies presented by the speaker on four different sectors: telecom, retail, manufacturing, and financial services. This provided a better understanding of the importance of improving business process quality through analytics.

Regression & classification models, Hypothesis testing, Simulation, Visualization & Hybrid ML are some useful techniques for building a data-driven quality organization.

Minitab, Excel with plug-ins, Crystal Ball, and Power BI / Tableau are the tools.

An organization that follows a bottom-to-top approach will find it easier to obtain quality data.

Cloud platforms are becoming the future of data storage by switching from 'Data Bases' to 'Virtual Data Lakes'

Certifications that working professionals should focus on to upskill themselves are generally categorized into three levels

-        For leaders and decision makers, pursue AI and ML Framework for Quality, Agility in Quality Framework, Awareness of entire data analytics framework

-        At the mid managerial or at executional level, choose business statistics, visualization (Tableau, PowerBI) and natural language processing (NLP).

-        For technical staff, they should be skilled in Python, R, Click View, SQL, and MongoDB

Data-driven decision-making needs to be made accountable by leaders within organizations. Business Leaders should go all out and learn as much about data as possible, concluded the speaker.