ADVANCED MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME 2007 - SUMMARY

AIMA’s Advanced Management Programme (AMP)-2007 defines Customer Centricity as the only means to achieve Profitable Growth in complex Global Business Competition

AIMA’s AMP has a 40 year long history and each year this week-long residential programme addresses major issues of urgency, importance and relevance for the top managers in India. This year’s AMP was conducted on the theme “Customer Centricity for Profitable Growth: Strategies for Global Competitiveness” at Golden Palms Hotel & Spa, Bangalore between December 16-22, 2007.

The programme was spearheaded as Programme Chairman by Mr. N.R.Narayanamurthy, Chairperson and Chief Mentor, Infosys Technologies Limited. A team of three distinguished Professors from leading Business Schools of USA consisting Prof Bala V Balachandran, J L Kellogg Distinguished Professor of Accounting and Information Systems & Decision Sciences, Kellogg School of Management; Prof Seenu V Srinivasan, Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Stanford University and Prof Hayagreeva Rao, Atholl McBean Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Stanford University conducted the Programme.

This programme was designed keeping in view a single purpose: “To help improve corporate performance by driving individual capabilities to their highest potential.” The participant must go back a transformed professional bringing tremendous value to his/her sponsoring company in the form of tools and knowledge to make the toughest decisions, skillfully and confidently. He/she must also get a better understanding of global business and the constantly escalating responsibilities of business leaders. Most important, he/she must return with the determination to act in innovative ways that will further enhance the performance of his/her organization.

AMP-2007 provided learning from world-renowned faculty, special interaction sessions with business luminaries and peer networking within an elite group- all fitting ingredients for the participants’ change into global business leaders.

The programme received an unprecedented overwhelming response from corporate India and drew a house full participation from reputed companies both in the public and private sectors. Top managers including CEOs, MDs and Directors from companies like Blue Cross Laboratories Ltd, Castrol India Ltd, Crompton Greaves Ltd, Eicher Motors Ltd, English Indian Clays Ltd, Heiligen (Worldwide) Services Pvt Ltd, HPCL, Indian Oil, Infotech Enterprises Ltd, ITC Infotech India Ltd, J K Agri Genetics Ltd, LG Electronics India Pvt Ltd, MRPL, NHPC, NICCO, NMDC and ONGC etc invested their invaluable time in this event to hone their business strategy skills.

AMP-2007 focused on “Customer Centricity for Profitable Growth: Strategies for Global Competitiveness”. Indian managers need to become global players to be able to beat the global competitors at their own game. This can be achieved only through total focus on the global customer. Innovative Organizational culture is the need of the hour. These seven days at AMP-2007 took the delegates through an interesting learning of being able to read the customer’s mind and leverage the same capability to achieve profitable global growth.

The programme focused on building leadership ability as a reader of customer mind to drive profitability in the long run. The aim was to provide insights, approaches and methodologies to deliver customer value with a strategic perspective and also focus on the implementation to sustain the same. The Programme actually offered an opportunity to the participants to experience ‘Balanced Excellence’ with case studies, new concepts and tools combined with a collective learning from an integrated and coordinated team environment.

The AMP-2007 revolved around the following sub-themes:

 Importance of Customer Centricity for Profitable Growth
 Leveraging Customer Centricity as a Strategic weapon
 Listening to the Voice of the Customer
 Understanding Customer Preferences for Product Planning
 Leading Change to a Customer Focused Organization
 Customer Perceptual Mapping
 Strategy Implementation- Lessons from Live Cases (A Day @ Infosys)

The programme was inaugurated on 16 December evening by Mr. N.R.Narayanamurthy, Chairperson and Chief Mentor, Infosys Technologies Limited. He came straight to the point and shared his struggle and success story to emphasize the value of Customer Centricity that really touched the audience. He maintained that tenacity of purpose coupled with customer goodwill at heart is the only key to compete successfully in global business arena. He was quite categorical in listing the following 5 elements that a truly customer centric organization must possess:

 Meritocracy
 Money Value of Time
 Trust
 Transparency
 Commitment to Purpose

The inaugural session was attended by top industry leaders from Bangalore, some prominent AMP alumni and a large number of media representatives both from print as well as electronic streams.

The three Professors combined the elements of Strategy from the functional perspectives of Operational Excellence, Change & Relationships Management and Stakeholders’ Expectation Management. Conceptual delivery was complemented with live examples and case discussions to achieve comprehensive learning. All the participants had to work very hard throughout the seven days. Time slots were provided for preparation of each day’s programme and also for small group discussions for preparation of the cases.

A film on ‘Execution’ screened by Prof. Balachandran left the delegates gasping for breath. The fact that human endeavour has no limits was sufficiently reinforced through this film.

Panel Discussion Forum provided an opportunity to the participants to raise business queries concerning their own companies. They participated with full zeal and total involvement.

Another highpoint of the AMP-2007 was the evening interaction sessions with eminent business leaders. The participants were exposed to the individual business experiences of achievers like Mr Harish Bhat, COO (Watches Division) - Titan Industries Limited, Mr K Jairaj, Principal Secretary - Govt Of Karnataka, Dr BVR Mohan Reddy, Chairman & Managing Director - Infotech Enterprises Ltd and Mr Aditya Nath Jha, Head - Brand & Communication, AVP - Infosys Technologies Ltd.

While Mr. Harish Bhat shared the Titan mantra of customer orientation, Mr. Jairaj took the participants along on his professional journey of innovative value delivery through flawless execution to the customer for creating Competitive Advantage. Mr. Reddy discussed global connect with the consumer as a means to achieve profitable growth and Mr. Jha showcased the intricacies of creating global brands.

All the sessions at the programme were highly interactive and the participants probed and queried to extract the maximum out of all the facilitators. The chemistry between the participants was also remarkable throughout and almost all of them carried not only learning but also friends for life back with them.

The final frontier of the programme was a day at Infosys where the participants were addressed by the Infosys top management team including Mr. TV Mohandas Pai and Mr. Bikramjit Maitra. The delegates were divided into two groups to contest the live case about Infosys and they made excellent presentations to the Infosys panel of top managers. One group came out as winners but the other group also actually did not lose as Mr. Pai had all praise for their ideas.

Learning Takeaways:

 Explore the Profitability Improvement Potential
 Maximize Profits by Strategic Understanding of Profitability
 Link Profitability and Global Growth
 Analyze the Customer Value Proposition
 Understand Customer’s Preferences and Perceptions
 Build Customer Focused Organization
 Lead the Change to a Customer Focused Organization
 Implement for Sustainability
 Cocreate Values with the Customer


Quotable Quotes:

Mr N.R.Narayanamurthy, “Meritocracy is the closest you could get to Customer Centricity- you value your employees on their merit and keep your customers satisfied by giving them solutions they merit”

Prof. Bala Balachandran, “Operational Excellence without focus on customers is null and void. Customer focus is what will drive the businesses to profitable growth.”

Mr. Harish Bhat, “Titan looks at Business excellence as a way to provide total solutions to its consumers. When we market watches or jewellery, we get fully involved with our consumers and try to solve their problems as best as we possibly can.”

Dr BVR Mohan Reddy, “We need to be globally competitive as we are catering to the global customer today. Align all your business strategies with your customer’s needs and you would have arrived.”

Delegates on AMP-2007

Sanjeev Mahajan, Eicher Motors “The programme more than exceeded my expectations. The combination of conceptual input followed by practice sessions was tremendous value add.”

Virendra Singh, SAIL “It was indeed an eye-opener. Deeply appreciate not only the learning but also the excellent arrangements.”

Deepankar Ghosh, ITC Infotech “I really had a great stay at AMP and the learning  was great. Thanks to AIMA for such precise arranmgements.  Will recommend this programme to others in my company certainly.”

 A Glimpse

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 Organisations Benefitted (JPG, 88kb)

 Participant Testimonials (JPG, 123kb)

 Participants 2007

 Participants 2005

 Participants 2004

 Participants 2003