After a bit of a break, we are back with episode number five. Our guest today is Pratul Kumar from Progility Consulting, a management consulting firm providing profitability and productivity improvement services, for clients in the B2B area. I had a chat with him discussing customer centricity and why it is important to the textile sector. This episode is packed with insights. As always, thanks for listening.

Spinning Values Podcast: Episode 5

Listen to Pratul Kumar, Progility Consulting, as we discuss the importance of customer centricity for manufacturing companies.

The biggest gap is always between the strategy and the execution. In this episode we sit down with Pratul Kumar from Progility Consulting to discuss how this is a critical issue for companies and how we need to plug the gap. Do subscribe to this podcast on your favourite podcast app.

Transcript of the Conversation with Siddharth Ladsariya, YVO. 

Ep. 5 - Pratul Kumar Pratul: If you see globally, the biggest gap is always between the strategy and the execution. And many, many companies have experienced this. We need to understand what is preventing us from reaching that strategy from a point of view of your management systems, your business processes, your people, their capability and attitudes, and fundamentally, the organization structure. We try to really understand that what is really limiting us from executing on that strategy.
Rajeev: You're listening to Spinning Values, a podcast on technology and innovation in the textile space. I'm your host Rajeev. This podcast is an initiative by Beekaylon Synthetics. After a bit of a break, we are back with episode number five. Our guest today is Pratul Kumar from Progility Consulting, a management consulting firm providing profitability and productivity improvement services, for clients in the B2B area. I had a chat with him discussing customer centricity and why it is important to the textile sector. Hi Pratul, thanks for joining this podcast Spinning Values powered by Beekaylon.
Pratul: Thanks. Rajeev. for having me on the show. Things are going very well. I'm sure after a COVID one is recovering well in your family and your friends network. So I hope everyone is getting better.
Rajeev: Thanks for asking. I hope things are going well for you as well. What's the effect of the pandemic on the manufacturing sector? Has it recovered right now, or is it back to how it was before? How do you see it going.
Pratul: well, so if you look at, from an India perspective, when a lot of the recovery has already happened.. Of course there is some amount of supply chain disruptions, which,still pockets of the industry is facing. But overall, I would say that, Indian manufacturing is well on its way of recovery. The latest statistics also suggests that, we're almost back to normalcy now. Bearing a couple of sectors. that's the good news for the economy as well.
Rajeev: Great. I just wanted to,find out what your field of interest is because it's something really unique that you do as far as manufacturing sector is concerned. I understand that you're into change management, from a productivity point of view and as well as process efficiency. In particular customer focus. So can you, give us a brief of what you do and what your organization.
Pratul: So let me start first with my organization, which is a Progility Consulting. I started this organization last year, in fact. And I've spent, about 25 years in the management consulting in industry. Having started Progility Consulting, our core focus is to work with B2B industrial product clients and to help them improve, two clear things. One, the profitability and the second productivity. And these two concepts have great interlinkage, between themselves. and we help management teams, we help people on the floor. We help the middle management.So, right from working with the senior management team on bringing in strategic clarity as to how they should really lay down the strategies, to working with the middle management team in operationalizing that strategy and working with the very, front end team in,executing the strategy, in making the change management, we work across layers, of the organization. Fundamentally, we are actually a implementation consulting firm. So we are not really in the business of providing just advice. We work with the organization and we make sure that the organization sees a very clear and tangible outcome. On, the solutions which we have jointly developed. So we make sure that they see a clear shift in terms of the profitability, clear shift in terms of productivity, and the customer focus. So these are the areas of work. And as I said, I spent about twenty-five years with various, multi-national consulting firms,spending time on similar practice areas with companies like EY, Pricewaterhouse. And then finally I started this consulting organization.
Rajeev: You said you are an implementation agency and not just pure consulting. That means you have to deal with, various types of,employees.From the top management to the workers on the floor. How does that work? Like how do you translate broad strategies into actionable tactical,things that, somebody on the shop floor can implement.
Pratul: How do you translate strategy into action? Yeah. And that's a very interesting question, Rajeev, I think, the whole philosophy, if you see globally, the biggest gap is always between the strategy and the execution. And many, many companies have experienced this. They have that, at the boardroom level.it's not easy, I would say, they have a lot of clarity on the strategy part. The top management is extremely clear what strategies to take. Of course, we help a lot of companies to clarify that, to make sure that it is very sound and very detailed. The gap between the strategy and execution has always remained and it's a big gap. What we help companies to understand is first of all, we need to understand what is preventing us from reaching that strategy from a point of view of your management systems, your business processes, your people, their capability and attitudes, and fundamentally, the organization structure.
Pratul: So these are the four elements. We try to really understand that what is really limiting us from executing on that strategy, which part of the business process or which part of the management system is not really helping us get there. And that's the hard part. The softer aspect is around the behaviors, the capability.
Pratul: So we work on that aspect as well. Looking at the strategy, we translate that into, areas of where and how the company can really make an impact by changing the management systems. What will you do in terms of business processes? And in all of this,the biggest differentiator is to get the alignment of people in any organization. We have seen, there are multiple stakeholders who are involved and every stakeholder has a very different view of what needs to be done for them to reach to a particular strategy or to particular end result, but getting of them aligned. Getting all of them to think together. To focusing on these building blocks of the organization helps us to get very practical. a strategy to a implementation group, blueprint, core is do we have the alignment of everyone, what needs to be changed? And that's a very detailed work that helps companies to really understand which part of the business, they need to really change, to move in the direction of achieving the strategy.
Rajeev: In a company like Beekaylon,who have long legacy in this market. And they've done things in a certain way for a long time. Is there a resistance to change in such companies? Do you find it difficult in implementation?
Pratul: Before coming to that question, let me give my perspective on a lawn. So as you rightly said, they have a very long legacy in the polyester industry and whatever I have understood, if you see, in polyester industry, a lot of companies in India have had a very, rapid growth. Pratul: But their balance sheets were very leveraged, right? So a lot of companies to achieve that growth levels in terms of sales growth, and to achieve that level of financial performance, they over leveraged on their balance sheet. But Beekaylon, if you really see, is one company in the polyester industry, which has retained it, it's focused on the balance sheet very strongly.
Pratul: So it has a very strong balance sheet, and it has been able to grow in very, very sustainable manner, which reflects in the long-term thinking, that, if a business has to be sustainable, your fundamentals have to be in place. And then of course, over a period of time, you will see the growth coming in would in terms of your customer base, your product base, everything increasing.
Pratul: Along with them. you will actually end up increasing your capacities as things progress. And that is very clearly evident in the strategy they have taken. and, the best part about Beekaylon is that, the promoter family is very involved in the running of the business. they're fully into the operations.
Pratul: They are taking day-to-day decisions. Of course it's a family run business, but at the same time, they have been able to bring that level of professionalism in the day-to-day operations. That's how,I know Beekaylon. Before we actually engaged with Beekaylon, the whole thought process was,can we understand from customers what is in the customers mind?
Pratul: And we did a very detailed survey. We spoke to many customers across segments of, Beekaylon's products, to understand what do we feel. Both from a point of view of product quality, the service quality,the approach of management and interestingly two things came out very clearly. One, most of the customers said that the quality of Beekaylon is not to be questioned. We did many discussions and everyone had the same feedback that never ever, they had a issue with the quality of the products. And that's really great. The second thing, and even higher than quality they said is that Beekaylon is one very ethical organization, which makes shows that all our business with them is done in a very ethical manner. and this industry is because it's linked to a lot of commodities. There is a tendency by other players to really take advantage of the pricing sometimes. But most customers, the feedback was that Beekaylon is very clearly very, ethics driven and we have never had even one dispute with Beekaylon. So these two were positive feedback. one improvement area, which everyone said was around, having all this as the good part. What they're actually experiencing is that they're on time deliveries are really good. In terms of when I say it needs a lot of improvement from what was promised to them and when it gets delivered. So, with that perspective, we started working internally with Beekaylon to really understand, what's really happening? If the product is good, the customers are coming back again and again to you,why is the service not really in place. And what can be done? And let me add here that it's not an issue with Beekaylon only. It's a problem which is industrywide. In B2B industrial sector, if you see the customer experiences lower by 50% compared to a B2C Company. So as a B2C customer, my experience with the company will be much higher, and this is a global statistics, but in a B2B environment, that experience level falls to about 50 percent. So, having understood this problem, then we started a very detailed, internal mapping of what could be the possible reasons and where we need to make a change impact in terms of what, which part of the business we change to make,improvement in the customer's life and eventually their experience. So that was the initial,context of this whole,But, and, like we discussed,Beekaylon has a long legacy and they've done things in a certain way. They're a family owned business and you know so on and so forth. How did they realize, that they have to change? Because the going is good, why should we fix that stuff, which is not broken, as they say, how did they take that decision of actually right.
Rajeev: We need to change, that itself is a pretty significant step for a very traditional business organization. That's the big step, that means that they have already made up,the promise that they will bring a change in the way they are operating. So I totally agree with you. I think, there were two realizations, one, pockets of customers had these, often. feedback from customers, they had got that, the on-time deliveries are not as per the industry standards. So that was one of the, feedbacks they have been getting. The second was also that,internally they were feeling that, because of too many orders and Beekaylon was one organization where they always had orders more than the capacity they had.
Pratul: So they were always fully loaded. So they always had this realization that are we losing out on important orders because we are doing a lot of firefighting to meet needs of the customer. Who's actually, you know, shouting at this point of time. So because of delays and those delays could be from a customer who has given us a very small quantity and is not really a strategic to our long term plan, but still we will be losing out on other customers and other profitable customers just to make sure we are servicing him. So I think from these two points of view, this realization came to them. That there's is something which needs to be changed. and of course,the entire management team, as I said, has a vision to really be a top quartile performer in the polyester industry.
Pratul: So they are moving in that direction. and this is one of the step, this is the first step towards that direction.  And out of your research, was there a realization that we need to focus on certain type of customers and not certain type of customers? Was there a sort of a rationalization from that part?
Pratul: Yeah. interestingly, when we started looking at this problem of on-time delivery, we were trying to understand it from multiple perspectives. And this happens in every organization. This is not Beekaylon specific. That as the organization keeps growing the number of SKUs, the stock keeping unit,keeps on growing. As the growth happens is very natural. And beyond the time it becomes that, the are your basket, your product basket has become too large. And that adds a lot of complexity in manufacturing. Because that means number of changeovers are going up. Number of, quality checks will go up.
Pratul: Number of audits will have to be more. So the more wider your product basket is. It's going to have a much higher impact on the complexity. Similarly, as you are growing, in your initial days, you would add lot of customers who would help you to enter the market, but over a period of time, that customer base also keeps increasing because you are trying to chase growth. but beyond a point, you'll always have a customer base, which is not everyone is strategic. Not everyone has the same need. Not everyone wants to be serviced in the same manner. And this is where I firmly believe that B2B industrial organization and especially textile organizations, if you see historically, they have been extremely focused on efficiencies, and the whole textile industry has been competing on that.
Pratul: Especially in India, the whole competition has been, are you more efficient than me? Or can your cost be lower than me, but in chasing all this, and this is very good. You know, many, many industry sectors are not even close to the efficiency levels, which one could find in textiles, both because it's a very old industry, but at the same time, the engineering levels, the quality of machines are so high in textile, that the efficiencies are already built in. You can't really run a textile business at 80% productivity level or at 80% efficiency level. Like you have to run it at a 95 or a 92% to make sure that you're surviving. So that's the table stakes in textile business. But having said that, one, one thing which organizations need to focus now going forward is what is happening with my product basket, what's happening with my customer and that customer base, which I have, what kind of needs they have? Do we need to service everyone in the same manner? Does each customer category needs the same similar time of response, time to the orders. And if you go deep, if you understand the customers deeply enough, you'll realize that some customers. and every customer is price sensitive. I'm not saying that, but there are customers within this pocket who would give a higher value to making sure that the deliveries on time,it matters price for them comes number two. So price is something which everyone is sensitive about, but, on-time delivery, listening to the customers.
Pratul: These are the which have started gaining a lot of importance. So we worked a lot on developing a method through which you can segment your customer base. And that's what we did exactly for big along. We came up with a framework to really help them understand what is the customer base like? And can you categorize them into pockets? Pratul: And we are not saying whether customers are important or not. All we are saying is, a different customer set has a different need and needs to be serviced differently. Another set of customers have got a totally different need and they need to be serviced totally differently. It is for you to understand this dynamics and design your response, design your supply chain in a manner which will satisfy both.
Pratul: And that exactly is the journey Beekaylon is on. I would not say that we have really covered this. These are still initial days. And this is, this is the direction we are taking to making sure that each customer gets, their critical needs get covered in the best possible manner by Beekaylon, so that they remain with us for a longer time.
Pratul: So customer centricity, as a concept and philosophy is what we're driving at Beekaylon.
Rajeev: Interesting. How does that affect productivity? Because you have thousands of looms running non-stop day in and day out and you're right now you're segmenting your customers based on different needs and so on. How does that affect productivity? how do you, correlate that?
Pratul: That's a very interesting question. So, there is one aspect around customer segmentation. There is another aspect called is product segmentation. And product segmentation helps you understand what's the demand pattern of your product. What patterns they are telling you. If you look into your history, look into your data, it'll tell you what is the pattern of this particular demand. and many of these products are going to all the sets of customers you have, right? So if one is very intelligent about understanding the patterns and understanding how we can manufacture it in a manner, that we don't lose our productivity, but we still are able to manufacture what the customer sets are looking for. So we also, develop the framework,to help them categorize the product basket, to understand the demand pattern and then develop manufacturing plans accordingly so that it ties well to the needs of the customer. And as I speak, this is all, it's a very long and long drawn transformation journey for Beekaylon.
Pratul: So this is going to take a lot of time, but we are moving in that direction where we are by bits and pieces, we are bringing in this concepts of how we can, understand customers, better understand the demand and the products which we are offering. How do we tie all this together into a plan, which optimizes productivity. And optimizes customer service. So, the next part, I really interested knows how do you, affect change? I mean your top management, of course, they accept change and they accept that you have to change in order to grow. And, even if it's difficult, they do it. But as you go down, lots of levels. do you inculcate, these habits into the general worker, your employees who are actually running the looms?  I think, the fundamental thing about change and,there are many, books, many thought process on how to drive change. And it's, there's no one, one answer to this, but, everyone has his own methods and everyone has his own approach. I think the one critical approaches that, if you want to bring change, the first and foremost thing is that you need to get people involved into understanding the change. So when we first started,the work at Beekaylon, the first thing we did was we involved a lot of people from the plant, from their head offices to first of all, really understand what is the issue?
Pratul: What is the need for change? And that has to be clarified them through multiple ways. One to look at their past, look at the data, look at the analysis, do a lot of interesting, meaningful, discovery processes, spend time on the floors, to really see what is happening. Spend time with people to understand what's happening in their jobs and bring all this insight for people really decide, is this what, the way they should be really, operating, is this really right for us? So the first is to let them accept the problem itself or all the way the better word could be, the challenges which are there in the system. Let them, first of all, get a deep understanding of where are we today and is this something, this is should be really running our business? And the biggest missing part is, we expect people to change without telling them why. So that why question has to be answered in very detailed, manner, it's a painful exercise. People in India are so involved with the jobs or they spend lifetime with the companies. So for them to disassociate themselves from what is being shown as an issue, rather than, taking it personally.
Pratul: It always happens, and that is where our role comes in, where we keep on telling them that, the person is independent here. It's about the issue which we are discussing. And the issue is that, we feel there's something wrong with the process. The performance is not coming up today.
Pratul: So we was spend a lot of time in helping, first of all, people understand the issues. Second step is to also involve them in defining. So, if this is the issue, what do you think we should be doing? Rather than being a very prescriptive kind of a change, we let them define the change for themselves.
Pratul: And of course we are there as facilitators, but we don't want to be prescriptive about it. We want them to adapt to it by understanding the issues. They come up with ideas that, these are the ideas we think we should be doing. This is the way we should be changing it. Rather than just giving them a report saying that, you have to change from tomorrow. That really works. Pratul: We are dealing with mature individuals. So we take that approach and then we also help them develop those ideas into full-blown, working models and working sheets so that people start adapting to that. And then of course, a lot of training, a lot of persuasion, a lot of handholding needs to be done so that this whole change actually starts percolating down, to the level.
Pratul: And people start using it as a system of their own,a way life of their own, and they have designed, they should have the pride that this new method, this new way of working is designed by us rather than being prescribed by somebody else. Rajeev: Right then, how do you make it a habit so that it continues even after you the project at Beekaylon. That a system that you set up, which makes sure that it continues forward and they keep learning from it?
Pratul: Yeah, so I think, sustainability of change, is,a very big challenge. You why it's easy, easier to bring in change, but to sustain that. And when I use the word sustain, I do not really expect people to continue following everything, what we have said, but what they need to continue is the philosophy of improvement.
Pratul: So Sustenance is actually in my view means philosophy of continuously improving that is sustenance. So they should be in the habit of continuously challenging their own methods, own processes.
Pratul: And coming out with improved methods and for that to happen, it needs lot of drive from the leadership,in any organization, if that drive is not there, it will be difficult to sustain it for a longer term.
Pratul: And that's the hard part. Top management may not have all the time with themselves, but, without them,it's too difficult, it's easier said, but,very difficult to achieve. The second part is, we bring things to a close only when it has already become part of their habit.
Pratul: So we don't really, prescribed or, we don't, once they have completed using it. Once the change is visible, the results have come, they have sustained it over a period. Then only we say that this is the new method, and this is the old method gets totally replaced. See the difference between a change and transformation is that in transformation, you will not have the reference of the old at all. It's a completely new method today. So once the new methods really sets in and it's irreversible. We can't really go back. Then we say that, we have made it permanent, so that it becomes irreversible in no case, we can go back that fallback is there. and it takes a lot of effort to achieve that.
Rajeev: How's it playing out generally in Beekaylon? Are you seeing a lot of progress and a sea change, like a before or after? And how are the customers reacting to this?
Pratul: We have done this project in multiple environments and, it's very easy to claim success and that everything has been achieved. And I'm in Beekaylon also we have seen multiple improvements happening in terms of productivity improvements in terms of on-time delivery improvements. And those have happened, but I will still, as a consultant and as a trusted advisor to Beekaylon, I still feel that we have a lot of ground to cover. Many improvements have still to happen to really come to that level, that, we are truly in the top quartile performance on various of these parameters. So we have, started the journey. It's a long drawn process. Of course, initial and results are very encouraging. People have adapted quite well to the changes. We see a lot of involvement, a lot of willingness. In people to bring on the new ways of working. and, it's a long way to go, in terms of, becoming the benchmark in performance in these areas.
Rajeev: So going forward, where do you see these kind of projects, in this sector? Do you see more adoption amongst companies for these kind of, practices?
Pratul: Yeah. So as I said, customer centricity is going to be one central theme, which is going to drive, choosing you over others, in B2B and the biggest factor, which is driving this change. It's because of B2B buyer is also in his personal life, he's buying B2C and his experience that ease of mind through shopping websites and, these, large marketplaces, the see that ease of buying happening. and they will expect the same from a B2B supplier as well. So I think the whole mindset shift on how to become more and more customer centric, how to improve the customer experience,that is going to help you retain your customers.
Pratul: Efficiency is going to be table stakes costs are going to be, entry for you to really get an entry into any client. That's going to be the norm. But what is going to differentiate you from any other competitor is going to be how more customer centric you are. What kind of experience you offer then the other company is not able to offer.
Pratul: So my philosophy and advice to all textile firm is that, going forward, customer centricity and innovation. So when I say innovation in your product basket, coming out with new and new products that is really going to keep you, in the top league of performance, and in the top quarter of your, customers., So that's the mantra one would have to adopt.  Rajeev: Thanks Pratul for your time and amazing insights into why customer centricity is important. And why this is going to be the key differentiator going forward for the textile sector. I hope this chat was useful for our listeners. I certainly found it really insightful. This is spinning values brought to you by Beekaylon Synthetics. Thank you for listening and see you in the next episode.