The jewellery division’s business excellence journey has been remarkable. Housing iconic brands like Tanishq and Gold Plus, the jewellery division has successfully matched the triumphs of its counterpart in watches, peaking the accomplishments in winning, this year, the ultimate mark of quality — the JRD QV award.
CK Venkataraman, COO of the Titan jewellery business, adds, “The questions that arose during the TBEM exercise opened our eyes to many details in aspects of running a business. Even though the TBEM framework is based on commonsense and logic, it takes the pursuit of excellence to another level by its comprehensive approach. A fair amount of credit for our business transformation is due to our journey in business excellence.” Making a start The jewellery division has come a long way from its very first attempt at the award in 2003, when Jacob Kurian, the then CEO of the jewellery division decided that it should part ways with the watches division and start its own journey. Mr Bhat says, “The beginnings were tough because we were a free-thinking and liberal kind of a company. In a way, it is counter-intuitive that such a company could be process oriented. But our factories were already very, very disciplined.”  Now the jewellery division is famous for several firsts. The largest jewellery retailer in India, the jewellery division has consciously built an atmosphere of innovation and customer-friendly initiatives that drive excellence in business. Sumant Sood, head for business excellence at the jewellery division, says, “The company has changed a lot because today we see benefit in the TBEM journey. We realise that all aspects of the business are important, not just the financials. We see how important customers are and how important people are and a whole lot of policies that are people-friendly and customer-friendly have come into place.” The jewellery division is a very uniquely run division from an excellence perspective because it is highly people-centric and customer-driven. Mr Bhat says, “Business success really is about growth and profitability and we had chosen customer-centricity and people as two important growth drivers.”  Overcoming the odds Early on, there were challenges aplenty. Many people did not understand the value of TBEM and did not see it as an opportunity for growth. But once the results started showing, there were many converts. Mr Venkataraman says, “Slowly, sceptics were converted, and a lot of us starting championing TBEM. When the operations started driving it, as opposed to the quality department of the company, we really gained traction.” Writing the TBEM application effectively was another challenge that the division faced. To surmount this, the team underwent training in writing the application in a way as to make sense even to the layperson. This strategy was extrapolated to the key business factors meetings as well. This helped in bringing out the best in the company and helped the assessment team understand the business better. To prepare for site visits, Mr Sood came up with a novel idea. He prepared a booklet with all possible questions and distributed it among his employees to respond. Mr Sood explains, “Based on the previous year’s assessments, I realised that people knew what they were supposed to say, but would feel nervous at the time of the site visit. I only gave them the questions because the answers differ from individual to individual. For the last two years, this was my only preparation.” Mr Bhat adds, “The effort is about showcasing the company to the assessors, writing the application well and ensuring that the opportunities for improvement and the feedback are taken seriously, then putting in processes, improving those processes that have been identified as lacking, and embedding those in the company or in the division. It is a continuous job.” Nothing succeeds like success The jewellery division is an immensely successful division today with a prevalent culture of innovation and improvement. Business and business excellence have merged and the division has become better at strategy development, strategy execution and information management. Mr Venkataraman says, “We have moved in the direction of business excellence at a faster rate with TBEM. Any reasonably talented organisation would have moved in this direction but the systematic way, the annual application process and the deep diving site visits have accelerated the journey. I think we had a four- to five-year advantage because of the TBEM exercise.” The jewellery division now has several TBEM assessors and mentors. The jewellery division’s strong customer focus has flowered as a consequence of its business excellence journey. “The comprehensiveness and the intensity with which we started understanding customers went up exponentially year after year when the business excellence journey was going on. Certainly TBEM was an influencing factor. Left to ourselves, I am not sure if we would have addressed these subjects that systematically. We would have reached there but not as fast, and as comprehensively,” says Mr Venkataraman. The jewellery division is revelling in much deserved success, while gearing up for the integrated application next year. After all, staying on top takes more effort than reaching the top.
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