 Hi everyone, this is Anali. Hope you're all doing well and staying safe. Welcome to the first episode of BEACS Academy, that is Business Excellence Academy on Mentoring and Coaching. This series is aimed at empowering business owners and entrepreneurs by providing them with the guidance and support they require towards achieving excellence in their businesses. Our goal is to take you step by step every week towards a successful business and our first episode is on the principles of business excellence. To all the attendees out there, please type in any questions you might have in the Q&A section and we'll try to answer as many as possible at the end of the session. I would now like to welcome our speaker, Mr. Gaurav Mariah, Chairman and Founder of the franchise India Group. A very warm welcome to you, sir. Thank you, Anali and thank you for hosting this another series. We just finished one series for 30 episodes where we talked about how can we value businesses, invest into new businesses, scale the businesses and also exit. This is a new series by BusinessX which will be talking about how you can achieve business excellence and we'll cover a lot of topics in this. It's also designed to empower business owners and entrepreneurs whenever they would like to bring excellence to their enterprises, especially targeted towards the small businesses and also a lot of startups because that's a community which we at franchise India largely or BusinessX would really address. So we make this very interactive so use the Q&A box and keep asking your question and I'll pick up the question as you go along or in the last part of the webinar I can take all these questions. So in this series which would start every Saturday at 11 o'clock we'll pick up one topic and there were nine topics which I would really work on and talk about these would be mixed off a lot of best practices which we see and we read and we have seen from I think particularly keeping India as a marketplace because sometimes we build a lot of content which is suited to other markets and might be right because from broad viewpoint the principles would remain same but the challenges of sometimes Indian business owners can be quite different. Like we are seeing one challenge now that the world is very differently behaving to this COVID and we are behaving very differently. Our businesses are also behaving very differently and the sport structures we have in India versus we have in say UK or US are also very different. So it's a very difficult and different times where we need to really see that how we can still continue to run our businesses without having any external sport coming to us. So it's a very unique situation to be in that you need to find your own path and your own way to really come out of that. So I will pick up a lot of these best practices which would come in and also take some of my own experiences because I have also in the journey of about 20 odd years 28 years I've been working with business and I've done a lot of businesses and and also failed a lot of businesses. So a lot of learning come from my own self also in terms of what should be done. So and this is also learning in the way you know so as everyday passes you know I also am learning that what is the better way to do things and this is a collective sharing of knowledge. So we'll talk about nine topics. One is largely leadership. We'll talk about business leadership. We'll talk about strategic planning. We'll talk about the consumer focus and how to create consumer delight. We'll talk about the knowledge management because this become a very important aspect of business. We'll talk about the business intelligence. How business intelligence can help you define your your path ahead. We'll talk about operational execution. We'll talk about team alignment and innovation especially these days. Team alignment has become a big issue and innovation is a constant work and finally we'll talk about the sustainability of business model because I'm becoming a big fan of sustainability. You know sometimes you have these curves and they're sharp curves which comes in and you need to really see how do you build a more sustainable business model. But today's discussion will revolve around business excellence and business excellence is developing and strengthening the management systems and processes of an organization that it can create a better shareholder or a stakeholder value. You know so there is a stakeholders for every business not really shareholders. How do we really create systems and management systems which can which can smoothly run the organization and achieve the goals which is set for it and especially for you know these systems you would see a especially business excellence as well adopted in the large corporates. I mean I in the morning was reading how Tata's have implemented business excellence in all their enterprises especially Titan. I read a case study on that and also I read about the institutes like Mahindra started a institute completely separate institute which is a business excellence institute not only for their own enterprise but now it also brings in a lot of learning to other corporates and so on. But when we talk about the business small business owners you know these would not be really so well implemented because their challenges can be very different. Their enterprise capabilities can be very very different. Their organization's strength can be very very different and entrepreneurs most of the time have to be involved themselves. So the three areas which concern every single business owner is really about growth performance and innovation. These are three very very strong thinking you know this goes to every day you go to your business you would have these three things. How do I bring growth to my organization. How do we bring better performance and monitor that performance and how do I continue to innovate. One of the areas which I'm working these days is that I've become a big fan of this situation where you know people would normally would see in the conventional businesses I would think that if I want growth then I need to work harder than yesterday or do more of what I did yesterday to get growth which means that I had to invest more in marketing more in resources more manners everything has to be more than what I did yesterday to get the growth. Actually it's a myth that's not true because at a certain level you will exhaust all these resources and you will not be able to put more on that and still you want the organization to grow so it needs a different thinking it would need what I call operational innovation unless and until you have to innovate every single operational structure of your company that you are able to address the same problem but do it better now. So you're addressing the same problem which is which is the problem you started your business on but now with innovation you are able to address it better if you are able to take those changes in your enterprise then you will be able to so which means that it's just not about the broader strategy it's also about equally efficient as the execution and the innovation in execution would really lead and sometimes we overdo on this strategy part of it and we don't really understand the innovation we require in our execution processes and if you really see in the last 15-20 years of enterprises or companies which have done well they have actually not really redefined the problem they've gone and efficiently deliver the great execution on that which is to me a more important aspect and now we are also seeing one company to another company like yesterday I was discussing with one of the big restaurant operators and he says it's a matter has significantly gone up then Swiggy in the last one year just because they've been more efficient operationally to go and deliver the same they're delivering the same product they just pick up food from another restaurant and bring it to your home and they probably would have similar kind of listings but one company has outperformed the other one just because of their operational efficiency so you really have to really soothe through that what how you differently are improving your smallest of the processes and able to get a better execution so there I would now talk about the 12 different points which to me are very very important when you're really looking at delivering business excellence and and particularly again designed for small and medium enterprises in mind because to me that's the segment which we largely address the first point which comes to you is how do you really monitor the performance itself you know and performances is divided into one is people you know people hiring people deployment and they're 100 involvement that's one part of the structure so you everybody wants that your team is not completely committed but they're emotionally invested into the business so how do you hire how do you develop and how do you get them 100 committed that probably is the burning issue with almost every enterprise and especially now because a lot of things have changed and it's become the biggest concern now how do you really get the best out of that but another part is how do you monitor that performance first you define that performance and then you monitor that now we give all the examples of the tech companies which have great environments great places to work almost all awards offer best place to work goes to these companies and when you visit these organizations you find lovely environments and so on and it feels like that how they are able to do it versus my own business and a lot of business owners come to me and say oh there is a difference in terms of what they do and actually if you really see they have a self-monitoring capability right so every person even if he's working remotely understands what he's not achieving and that changes when you are looking for a small business it's very instruction based you continue to really instruct and whatever you do that there is no capability for people to even know what they are expected to do so there will always be gap on the expectation to from a management viewpoint and what is being delivered and that would create not so much of what I call the holistic development of the talent and you will never get their 100% involvement rather there is a three stages of people involvement average companies that you see mid size or small size companies would have only 30% of their workforce really involved in the business and what I call positively engaged in the business 70% of them are either not engaged or actively disengaged which means that they are absolutely not they are negatively working for the organization to pull the organization down so you really have a biggest challenge and pain point is how do you really get the performance right and performance would all be based on these two aspects how do you deploy talent and how do you monitor that performance which is complete I call the triple C how do you are how you are you know concerned and how you care and how you connect with every single employee and so we will ask a very important question how do you win employees trust in testing times a very difficult answer to give really because there is no definite answer and prolong the situation like this which is now 14 months even the largest of the corporates which have a very different approach to all these things are are behaving very differently so but yes you can be as I said triple C care get show your concern and stay connected that's the answer to it and also a bit of transparency because a lot of people appreciate where the organizations are if you are transparent as organization and you you know what is going on and people know about your company it also helps you to have a better involvement and better engagement and and not taking two extreme steps you need to really be moderating your structure the second piece which is very important for you know small businesses especially is they there is something I'm reading on what I call the breeding organization as a breeding organization you need to be somebody who's actually getting a lot of input you're open for listening you're learning as an organization that's something which becomes very difficult especially when it looks like a small and medium enterprises they have a resistance towards that you know they are not a breeding organization even I think this is a problem lies in larger companies or I would say the the legacy institutions you know they at a certain stage stop listening at all and they don't know really what is going on and that's why companies collapse and they they're not able to do that even one of my companies really was consistently growing for 15 years 15 years and never year on year growth every time double digit growth and so on and a particular year realize with all the effort which I said I was putting more effort than what I did yesterday and results were not coming because we didn't understand that there was a huge shift which already started to happen people were not expecting what we were delivering and they already are shifting and so it was even more expensive to get them back so that's something you need to really understand so unless and if you are a breeding organization you continue to understand and get a lot of observation inside the company in a good fashion and a right fashion and and you also have to have ability to have ability to ask right questions you know and then only right answer would start coming in so second point is how do you really build a breeding organization that's very important third is create the larger vision for future you know so this is a good time actually if you really ask me I'm most of the company I'm advising these days I said rewrite it your your future now define what is what is looks like and how sharp you are very clear in terms of defining what is the future for the organization and that's something sometimes if you have a little bit of run you start becoming confused you don't know what how do you define that you just keep going it's like just writing the the tiger you just don't have ability to understand that how do you really define the future more you constantly go and define that future and continue to take within the stakeholders and they understand where we are going to then only you have and and the vision as to also have to be not too long you know you cannot even predict what five years are but you can predict what is the next two years are so really define your your piece fourth which is my subject which is what I do for living for last 23 years how do we build a repeatable system in my business it's called franchise but anything you do any anything which you do which can be repeated as a system and and create the same kind of consistent results then only it becomes sustainable to me and so so unless and until you really design an organization or every single process of your organization which can be repeatable and it can be easily trainable and and then only it becomes rather I use this word called become an idiot proof so if it would become the idiot proof then that process really can be done because that's also a very important part of achieving business excellence that how do you really build a repeatable systems in the entire thing especially for small businesses we've done a lot of that sometimes very simple businesses like look at a business like a ferns and petals it's just a flat shop you know but they have over the years found systems how to run efficiently a flat shop and it became a repeatable system now they can duplicate that to 300 locations in the country so that's something which is which is to me very very important another area which is fifth point is really about defining what I call the business scorecard almost every month rather than looking at your pl pl people most of times they have that pl understanding especially business owners any given point in time you ask them what is your profitability and what is your top line bottom line they they were pretty much nowhere while there would be some varies in time but that's not really the answer of your how your organization is doing I've seen healthiest of the organizations in two quarters sync because they were not reading the other things around how do your financials is just one part of it but how is your consumer experience the second part of it your how your organizational capability is growing that's another part of it how you're actually getting performance of entire organizational assets which can be people and your capital or any kind of physical asset how they are officially performing for you all these pieces together becomes what I call business scorecard unless and until you start taking a pl and shift your focus on reading your business scorecard and rate yourself how you're growing in all these aspects you can even take more more aspects to that business you know and that would really come down to how you're performing sometimes you're just looking at the financial and this problem happens with a lot of these large companies because they are they're represented on board and board has a little bit of a flat eye on other things which are happening because that's not the part of the duty to the responsibility and they would look at and get excited about the financial performance of organization and that's why we've seen the lot of companies which are financially very well performing at a particular stage and they start not doing well because they didn't understand how the consumer was behaving how operational capabilities were growing how they were performing on all their organizational assets now the sixth point is how do we build sustainable improvement you know that's very very important because the customers are going to change customer will continue to ask a better stronger faster and a cheaper product every time you know constant ask is how do I get better stronger faster and cheaper product and and now there is a new thing which is added to it what we call how do you reduce the inconvenience to the consumer continue to reduce that inconvenience you know like amazon started with the delivery it was I can get you home which is one convenience but I can get I can I get a faster to my home can you deliver even 30 minutes to my home so which means that's constant eye for amazon is to really deliver almost everything to the home so they're adding on one side a lot of products which were not part of amazon and and second thing is how do I get faster to your home and more efficient to your home so they would continue to do these things and how do you really and every time you need to measure that that how I have moved up and taken little more inconvenience out of this whole process little more inconvenience you might not be able to do that but if you can do a partial improvement of that if you were delivering something in three hours can you deliver this in two hours 45 minutes that to me is your sustainable improvement how do you continue to challenge every single thing and look at from a consumer viewpoint how do you really bring want to bring a sustainable improvement to the organization the seventh point is how do you maintain momentum you know how do you really continue to run a momentum on your business model how you are every single thing is is continue to push each other and that's something which becomes even more difficult and especially in these times big big big problem because February March almost all organizations we were consulting January February March started looking at you January February was looking very good March and it started changing because we had some news coming from Maharashtra and things of that nature and then April started tanking again and now again to pull up this whole momentum it took the full quarter of Q3 to bring a good quarter of Q4 which was looking like a good quarter and now you're gaining the dip and you're going to bring that momentum back it takes in that so now it is the business I'm advising is not about really about making big plans and pushing something and that I think is just continuity you need to continue this and that thing continue to see this that your businesses and whatever you're doing has some kind of a continuity to do that you cannot do this so it is very important times to really maintain momentum I feel that the biggest challenge today with almost every enterprise every business every business leader is that how do you really continue to have the momentum going now finally is how do you make your organization point is how do you really make the organization as a thinking organization how do you really use these three important aspects one experimentation almost everything which needs improvement needs to have new experimentation second how do you bring observation and third a business analytics everything can give you a good observation but it is important to change how far we can change that would come from a stronger analytics so if you can really as a thinking organization can bring this experimentation observation and analytics to your organization and never have a fear to implement that rather I call the test and measure everything you do test it measure it and if it is results is good then just go out and implement it so that's the way it should be done almost everything you test and measure don't wait for others to do you know you need to be a front runner for doing it and we've seen almost all organizations which had experimented to improve the consumer experience eventually it is all about consumer experience if you ask why you exist is because of your customer and if you feel that I can improve something to my customer by experimenting something and it works well and you get the good observation and you you analytically feel that it is a right fit another four fits I always advise which you should use in an enterprise any decision you're taking in your enterprise always bring these four fits what is called strategic fit this is strategically right financial fit which means that it is would not have any adverse financial impact on you marketing fit which means that it speaks the same language which you as a communicate to your audience and operational fit it should also be operationally within your capabilities to deliver you know you cannot bring that change which is like say for example I was running a food business and FND business and I I wanted to experiment but that experiment would mean change of menu which means change of packaging change of other things and that would change my operational capability right because I don't have that capability and I will not be sometimes some observations some feedbacks are great but they're operationally not right for being implemented right so that's something which you need to be very consciously to that and finally the ninth point is is about focus on process how do you really focus on building every smallest thing which happens to the your enterprise has to be followed as a process there's an interesting saying which I read he says if you cannot describe what you're doing as a process you don't know what you're doing it's a very interesting saying if you want to make notes you can make notes on that if you cannot describe what you're doing as a process you don't know what you're doing so this is very very important aspect where almost everything which you run in the company it can be very simple day-to-day system also has to be documented as a process and used to be defined and then which was because it's defined you can clearly connect the dots you can create the whole architecture of your of your business and once it is done the business can run without you otherwise business owners especially small businesses they're always available to connect the dots because there has to be somebody who's just trying to connect that and it is really heavy lifting because you are you are the one who's really doing all that please now another area which is very important and this is what I would advise the startups early stage companies and and this is a 10th point is that you need to make 100 percent efficient product at the start now a lot of lot of thinking comes in saying look let me evolve as I go along and and let me continue improvement would happen you know every single thing from a business viewpoint but when you're starting something you need to be 100 percent sure that this was the best you can deliver at that point and and whatever the goal you set for sometime half-baked structure you can take it to the market it just doesn't work I mean there is a very short window now left where somebody would accommodate your mistakes a very very short window there is nothing which is available now I feel that you rejected almost instantly so we've seen a lot of startups failing a lot of startup failing because they have no you know product was still in development and they took to the market and that's something you should not you should even delay your launches or launch of your product or your commercial launch unless and it will be very very definite on this now 11th point is create larger consistency of your purpose how do you what purpose you started from there has to be a consistency in that now this also changes I've seen that if you start a business and you started with some purpose you wanted to have solved some problem and that was a larger purpose you started an enterprise and two years down the line three years around the line it has changed like I was advising the you know a lady out of a good girl she runs she started a design company and later she became industrial because they put as a design company made a factory now because they put a factory they want the factory to run 24 hours so they are producing what people want and suddenly they become from a design company to industrial company and the design side has gone backseat and now they are only making sure they sweat out the machinery to produce more now the whole purpose has lost you know and and sometimes this is this is the difficulty which I see in companies because they start chasing financial goals because they have to pay the bills and the tactic and they lose the purpose which makes the organization anyway more hollow because just driving hard to just sustain that organization where the purpose itself has been lost and that's something which is very very important to continue to remind yourself and create a little bit of consistency in terms of why you were there and what purpose you want to really solve and finally think about the customer the 12th point is it's all about customer how do you deliver great customer value efficiently effectively and consistently how do you really deliver a great customer value effectively efficiently and consistently and continue to measure that so these are the 12 points if you if you do that you will be able to build a business excellence and and this is something which we are more than happy to share with you also if you are interested to get more you know information on this or maybe a note which I've shared with you I'll be more than happy to share with you and also follow our series this would be every Friday for 30 minutes we'll talk about one topic every single time and and also be happy to take your feedback any feedback you would have or anything which fits into your business you need more elaboration we will be happy to review that over to you Sonali. Thank you so much Gaurab sir for a wonderful session as always it was very insightful and I'm sure it added value to our audience's lives as well I know we have exceeded the time limit of the series but will it be possible for you to take up a few questions in the end? Sure let's go for a couple of minutes. Sure so the first question we have is how to create a growth plan when the situation at this moment is so unpredictable my company created a plan in the start of last quarter aiming for excellent growth thinking this COVID situation was about over but now it has hit us again and all plans are now looking unachievable how to cope with this? You know this is very unpredictable this can happen to this is first time it has happened to almost all businesses I mean this statement can go with everybody possibly but you can only say what stage of maturity you are if you are a business which is at a certain stage then obviously you have a different impact if you are a mid-size and if you are an early stage you will have a different kind of impact at this stage I would say early stage companies are better off because you have no you can just say I'm delayed by one quarter or I'm delayed by two quarter and if the purpose of your enterprise still is going to be relevant which I'm sure because if you've started something you would be thinking something which is relevant for the next five ten years which means that you're not losing much and rather use this time to do that I see a bigger problem with companies which at a different level they cannot even stop they have to continue to run they are the ones who are in a deeper problem and they would have sometimes unrealistic advantage to their competition to take their market share so those would be bigger challenges but if you are an early stage I think you can really use this time to do whatever we discuss build your capacity the business excellence write every single process of your enterprise so when you are back and starting them that piece you're better off and you're able to do a much faster scale than you would have done now so it's a good time to be a little on the business rather than in the business so think over it design your business write every single process define your micro goals and whenever this times becomes a lot start looking at this or maybe start seeing the new tip going up start putting in you know your growth back and scale back absolutely sir the next question we have is how would you define business excellence is it based on year by year growth or financial growth or brand improvement or something else in your opinion as a business excellence I've run through all the points it can be you know and and it's largely to achieve your business scorecard matched with your the larger business vision and if you are able to do that so business excellence is actually every smallest parameter of your business performance and see that they can continue to improve and it's all driven by systems and processes and that's something which is to me an effective business excellence another question we have is how to grab the audience's reaction to my product since it's a really good good quality product but I cannot compromise on price it's a new product hence struggling on achieving the hype among our customers you know I have to go into a little more detail in terms of what your product is and who you're trying to address who is your target group where it is available like I'm advising these days of a new brand which is coming in black tea you know black tea looks like very common thing but actually we don't have genuine black tea in India and which you can drink it without milk and without now it's it's demand is already there there's a conscious customer who doesn't want to have dairy or a vegan or something like that and one so prefers this and there is a shift customer which is drinking green tea but wants to drink black tea can convert from green to this because green doesn't have that maybe the taste which we all like as a Indian tea drinkers because you've grown up on the regular teas now that's very but the problem is where do I find them you know where these customers exist how can I go closer to them and how do I encourage them to attempt me that's the answer we have to solve sometimes you have a great product but you are not able to define very sharply your target group and more importantly what is the reason why people would shift wherever they are so which means that I was using something not that I was waiting for this tea to come because I was not drinking tea for the last five years because I was waiting for this to happen I'm drinking something somewhere how do I shift from where there to this is a bigger problem to ask and that's something which which business owners should really focus and define absolutely sir the next question we have is can you please elaborate more on the quote you said if you can't describe what you're doing as a process then you're not doing anything no yeah so it's actually about every single process in your business most of the smaller businesses or mid-sized businesses are very instruction oriented right so everything is get done this get done this get done that but this is not defined as a process and so it means that if not talent is not trained on that process so because if it is not defined you'll always be in a certain one of challenge not able to address that so every smallest piece in your or your business it can be simplest of the things can be defined as as a certain process and it can be internal stakeholders external to consumer to vendor to any other stakeholder in the business any kind of a process has to be very well defined and named and then it becomes much easier to write on that right sir and finally the last question of the session that I would like to take up is how to win your employees trust in such testing times yeah I answered that person will be I think she asked that question that I answered so it's it's it's about the three C's which I said care and and show your concern and also I'll see my notes and it was scared and stay connected yeah so that was good thank you very much thanks for joining in today this is a part of our series franchising that does a lot of knowledge webinars opportunity webinars and Sonali is part of business X business X is a platform which helps you to raise capital as you're looking for raising capital or building business valuation we have a valuation team and also we have a business resell team which means that if you're not willing to continue your business and you want to exit that business that also helps franchising there obviously by name it says that this is a franchise organization helps you in franchising growing your business through franchising and also if you're looking to buy a franchise that also there and then we have another company called entrepreneur entrepreneur is the largest uh entrepreneur ecosystem in India so please go and subscribe these channels there's a lot of content available for business owners and we'll continue to bring our fresh and content to you thank you very much thank you so much once again Gaurav sir for a wonderful session and thank you to our audience for joining us today as Gaurav sir said this is a weekly session so we would see you next time next Saturday at 11 o'clock for a half an hour session and thank you so much Gaurav sir for again answering all the questions very patiently uh and if anybody has any questions at all please feel free to reach out to me and I would be happy to take up your questions anything you would like to say in the end sir I've put my email id also it's gm at Gaurav Mahara.com if you have any questions for me or anything which you want me to also further define please send me a quick mail and I'll I'll make sure that I send back the reply and answers to you thank you very much please take care of yourself and be safe and but constantly keep your mind working positive thinking and also think about your careers and your growth of your enterprise because that's what we are born to do you know that's what we need to do uh while all this would settle sooner or later but we need to really think about how are we going to grow our businesses and enterprise thank you absolutely thank you so much everyone