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TCS Shares to Learn
June 17, 2008
TCS' "Bring 3, Take 30" program enables organizational best practices to take root.
By Sarah Boehle
With approximately 110,000 employees and more than 155 offices spread across the globe, sharing best practices and new innovations that emerge out of large client projects were big challenges for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a global IT services and consulting firm. That is, until the company launched its "Bring 3, Take 30" program in October 2006.
It started with a simple idea. "We knew there were innovations taking place and best practices emerging across verticals. But we needed a platform that would allow account managers from different backgrounds to be able to share them and determine if they might be applicable to projects in other areas of the company," explains TCS VP Ajoyendra (Ajoy) Mukherjee, who is head of global HR at the company. The question was, how?
While TCS already had knowledge management databases in place, viewing such information "on screen," Mukherjee says, wasn't always as effective in getting people to determine how a particular best practice might be applied to an entirely different industry or project. The solution: get people together and get them talking so that they could more easily make those connections.
To that end, "Bring 3, Take 30," was launched. The informal "share-and-learn" program asks account managers throughout the company to gather together once per quarter to capture technology, domain knowledge and management expertise from various client engagements and transfer these across the firm's practice areas. Program participants are asked to "bring three" such innovations to each meeting, and "take 30" ideas back to their own work environment.
Training recently spoke with Mukherjee about the program's impact, as well as his tips for success.
Training: What are some of the results that "Bring 3, Take 30" has delivered?
Mukherjee: The program resulted in the spread of a number of best practices across the organization; three of which proved to be particularly beneficial:
• Code efficiency meter. A few experts in a certain technology demonstrated the power of the technology by sharing daily tips with junior colleagues. This seeded a community of practice, the members of which created a new asset—a reusable "Code Efficiency Meter"—that improved the efficiency of software code and shortened coding time.
• Center of excellence. The expertise acquired in a client-supplied product was leveraged to form a full-fledged Center of Excellence (CoE) that added such great value to the use of the product that it was sought after as a beta-testing site by the product manufacturer. Also, by exploiting our expertise with the product and projecting our capabilities, a major multi-million-dollar, multi-year contract was won.
• Onboarding. Our large projects require the indoctrination of fresh graduates in large numbers, who must acquire very specialized skills. This posed a challenge because new associates are not allowed access to client systems until they clear a screening interview. And because customers demand people with three years of experience or more, client rejection rates of these fresh graduates were very high. Even those who passed the screening typically took six to eight weeks before they could help deliver best-in-class solutions. In response, we created a program that trained fresh recruits in only four weeks. As a result, rejections were drastically reduced (by 67 percent), training effectiveness was enhanced, and the program was so successful that some of our clients considered doing away with screening interviews altogether.
Training: What tips or best practices can you share with other readers who might be interested in implementing something similar?
Mukherjee:
• Keep it freeform. Running the program in a free and open format, as opposed to a structured one, where people are encouraged to bring their best practices and share their insights in an open discussion, typically works best. Think of it more as a get together where people can talk things out than a structured training program.
• Give it time. Initially, not everyone was necessarily keen to participate in this, particularly during the first few sessions. It took time for people to see its value. So do what you can to encourage people to come to the process with an open mind. And be patient.
• Accept that not every idea will be deployed. Not every idea that works in one vertical will necessarily work in others. And that's okay. The networking and bonding that takes place across verticals and across accounts are valuable in and of themselves.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Limited is a global IT services, business consulting and outsourcing firm. In 2008, it placed 115th on Training magazine's Top 125 list, an annual ranking of organizations that excel at human capital development.
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