Participant Interview: Himadri Sarkar (Black Belt)-Manager: Improvements & Projects, Hutch.

Sharing his decade of experience and pluses of Six Sigma, a young and confident Himadri Sarkar (HS) gives us an in-depth view of his breakthrough projects at Hutch. Read on to see how Six Sigma can generate handsome revenue for an organization...

BSS: Let us begin with your career growth and movement and impact of Six Sigma on the same. Please elaborate.

HS: Post my schooling, I went for a 3 years Hotel Management degree at IHM-Kolkata. Therafter spent the next 5 years working in the hospitality sector with global giants like Accor, Marriott and Grand Hyatt. Having thoroughly enjoyed my career in hospitality, I switched to Hutchison 3 Global Services, which is also my current organisation for the last 5 years.

About my journey at Hutchison I started off in Operations, from where I was absorbed into the Quality Improvement team which caters process improvement and business excellence.

My role in Process Excellence spans across delivering high end projects related to revenue maximisation, cost reduction, customer experience, employee engagement & morale building. I have taken several projects in these areas as leader or a mentor. Apart from several green belt and few Black Belt projects, I have also deployed/mentored umpteen Lean and Kaizen projects, more from a continuous improvement perspective.

About my Six Sigma journey, post my Green Belt, I underwent a Black Belt training. Post the training got Black Belt Certified with a project submission to VK.

BSS: You moved to Telecom after a degree and 5 years' experience in Hospitality? Was it a matter of chance or choice?

HS: To be honest, I think I haven't moved at all! I believe firmly that any organisation's pay cheque comes from its customers and customers sit on top. And talking about shift, my domain is not hospitality or telecom; it is Customer Service (Claims!).Starting with giving good food and rooms, I moved to ensure that my customers get uninterrupted connectivity and benefit of technologies like 3G. To add Abhishek, I think there are three things that a customer always wants:

1. Perfect! - Defect free - Defect Elimination

2. Free! - Low Cost - Cost Reduction

3. Now! - ASAP - Cycle time reduction

It is my continuous focus on these pillars of service that explains my shift across mutiple domains

BSS: It seems Six Sigma has surely impacted your career, my question is ‘how'? And what's its influence on your personal life?

HS: Six Sigma has enabled me to understand complex business processes in depth. Now I can look deeper in any business situations, identify the problem or pain areas and figure out a solution that is ‘self-sustainable'.

At an interpersonal level, Six Sigma helped me to be an effective change agent by realising that the most powerful tool to get change is to create the right excitement amongst the employees.

BSS: Being a BB with so many hands-on project, how do you apply Six Sigma in your current job at Hutchison? What are the pain areas? Were the targets/goals of the project met? Please elaborate.

HS: Let's see it as a business case: At Hutchison, the strategic objective for 2009 was to be a consumer champion. One major hindrance to achieve this goal was that the bottomost quartiles (25th percentile) of advisors (read customer care executives) were causing huge dissatisfaction due to poor customer service. At the same time, we were having a revenue loss due to involuntary attritions caused due to performance issues. The objective of my project was to improve the resolution scores (Resolution: Affirmative response to survey question i.e. if our advisor resolved your query) of these bottom performing advisors up to the floor median within three months from the start of the project.

Here, we used a DMAIC approach. We defined the as-is process map, we figured out the probable X's and performed hypothesis to figure out the critical X's. On identifying critical X's, we made an improvement plan. Then it was first piloted (for a month) to eliminate any risks. Then after getting a green signal from the senior management, we launched it to the entire population (cross functional).

Outcome: We saw close to 35% increase in the resolution. In a pioneering improvement, majority of the bottom performers moved up to the top quartile of performance.Last but not the least; we saved around £30K for the organisation.

BSS: Which Six Sigma methodologies do you use most often?

HS: Project Charter, Measurement System Analysis (MSA), Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Hypothesis Tests and the 7 quality tools namely, Pareto Chart, Flow Chart, Fishbone, Histograms, Checksheets, Scatter Plot and Control Charts.Each one of these can be used in isolation of its DMAIC structure and hence they are my favourites

BSS: How will you define your Black Belt experience with Benchmark?

HS: I got my training and certification and post project completion from Benchmark Six Sigma.My experience was Phenomenal!! Firstly, I found a great mentor and trainer in VK. Secondly, the kind of network I developed during my training still exists. I made some lifetime friends in those six days. The training was practically and theoretically fulfilling for me.

BSS: What sort of SS Projects has you working on in the past? Kindly mention some.

HS: Here are some major Six Sigma projects I took in the past:

Outbound Call reduction process: for an inbound call process, making an outbound call is a non-value add activity. We made our processes so strong that one would not need an outbound call and yet take care of the resolution. It involved measures to ensure eventual resolution for the customer even if the call dropped or in the case of part troubleshooting.This saved us a revenue optimisation of £2M.

TAT Reduction: Being a technical entity, our processes are complex. Earlier, there were 16 applications to be referred by a call agent (with various combinations and permutations) while taking a call. As a solution, we used CCF (Customer Care Framework) by Microsoft. This framework works like a skin to the applications where the calls are programmed in such a way that the advisors need not remember which screen or operation to use for each call. The CCF intimates the user and takes him directly to the right screen. This along with mistake proofing reduced the Turn around time and increased accuracy of transactions.While the resolution was positively influenced, the major benefit was on customer experience and employee morale as well.

Reporting Enhancement/Creation of Business Dashboards: The Interaction Management process was re-designed to capture VOC. The VOC's were further made to reflect the VOP and VOB giving us vital CTQ's to work upon.

BSS: Do you think anybody if willing, can learn Six Sigma? Or it is only meant for academically brilliant people?

HS: Anybody with a logical bent of mind and eager to "doing the right thing, the first time, everytime" can go for Six Sigma. It's a conditioning of mind rather than anything else. I have been no academic dexter myself (Smirks!)

BSS: Would you like to give any suggestions to us for improving our program?

HS: I think the Black Belt program can be a little longer and more of case studies can be included in it. The extra day should only be around case studies so that participants can walk out with a hands-on experience.

BSS: Would you like to tell us about your future plans? How will your Six Sigma learning benefit you?

HS: My vision is to ensure that I bring around the Six Sigma culture in which ever organisation I want and drive the culture in a way so that I can take Y=f(x) tool should be taken out of the Black Belt's bag of tricks, dusted off and taught to employees at all levels. Once this "family tree" analysis is widely understood, breakdown of the organization's key performance indicators (KPI's) can begin.

This can be revolutionary for some managers who might previously focus on "the critical few" but struggled with complete understanding of how they were derived. [Top Down Approach]

By choosing areas of the tree that were under-performing, they would be able to seek immediate management support [stakeholder enagagement]; initial data and departmental subject matter experts who would help develop the sub-process breakdowns.

BSS: What do you think is the right time to get exposed to Six Sigma tools/methods? In college/first job or later as you grow? Please give the reason behind your choice.

HS: I advocate that the theoritical understanding of Six Sigma should start of early at the college level.In fact; it already forms a part of the curriculum for MBA and Statistics/Economics courses.

BSS: Please leave a message for our readers...

HS: Six Sigma methodology and its statistical tools should never be used in isolation.Logical validation, common sense approach and industry practices should always support the findings and eventually the conlusions and improvement plans. Finally, I wish all the readers a breakthrough journey in their professional and personal lives. (Signs off)