Going Beyond the Obvious is an Approach for the Healthcare Sector in the Post-Pandemic Era

Key highlights

What this conversation covers

We would like to start with your role and journey at Alcon Global Services, leading the India, Malaysia, Poland and Mexico centres for AGS and being a custodian for transformation programmes in the organisation.

Having around 24 years of overall working experience, I am a mechanical engineer by qualification who started the journey in the manufacturing industry, initially as a trainee with Honeywell and then working in various roles there. For the initial six years of my career, I was in the manufacturing sector associated with brands like Honeywell, Whirlpool Corporation and Delphi. My area of focus during those days was explicitly in production and quality, and that is when I was introduced to Lean Six Sigma at the beginning of my career, which I still hold on to as a critical element in my profession.

In 2005, with the tech boom reaching India, many companies were setting up their shared services centres here. That is when I joined Honeywell again as a quality manager responsible for driving a culture of continuous improvement through transition-based learning. From then on, for the last 17 odd years, I have been involved in various shared services roles and also had an opportunity to set up a shared services centre for Honeywell in Europe.

In between, I was associated with MetLife for some time in their consulting division. The next stage in the journey was ABB, where I was entrusted with the role of setting up their shared services centre and supporting their strategy to develop the whole GBS set-up across five different locations globally. This was a great opportunity, and I was happy to be a part of the initial team.

Finally, I did the same for the fourth time, starting from ground zero to setting up a GCC, and this time it was for Alcon Global Services in India, which now has more than 2,000 people across the globe.

What are your observations around the approach at AGS in terms of tech usage for the digital transformation initiatives? And while setting up and leading the shared services organisation at AGS, what were and are your primary goals in achieving the strategic business priorities via digital transformation initiatives? Could you also share some notable and effective business impacts of the initiatives?

At Alcon, we started as an independent company almost five years ago, and from day one itself we aimed to have a structured way of digital transformation, both in terms of outward and inward experiences.

Our first point of action started with defining our customer cohorts and aligning strategic digital business priorities with them. And since customer needs are constantly evolving, our digital transformation project modules align with the changing CX requirements, be it for the eye care professional, the patients, or the inventory management systems.

Speaking of notable business impacts of these initiatives, I would like to share the following examples:

• We have been working to ensure that the patient onboarding systems provide a seamless digital customer experience for both the end users, that is patients, and the healthcare providers, that is the physicians and the hospitals.
• We introduced the portal MyAlconStore.com, where users can order and track the products easily.
• We have also enabled pilot projects with a structured inventory management system for the hospitals, allowing stock planning to ensure the end customer experience is satisfactorily met.
• Then, pilot projects are initiated with the help of generative AI to enhance inward digital transformation in terms of employee experience enhancement.
• Finally, we plan and prioritise the product features from the customer's perspective, so the MVP is the base of our initiatives.

As an industry leader, what is your observation of how things have changed in the post-pandemic scenario in the healthcare sector, and what are the key CX approaches to look out for while stepping into 2024 and beyond for top healthcare organisations?

Going beyond the obvious is an approach that the overall healthcare sector is focusing on in the post-pandemic era. Since the pace of change is so fast, we have to be ahead of the curve, which is tough, but integrating all facets of the overall healthcare ecosystem is the right approach. The next step, then, is the process of revisiting the strategy to validate and align it to the present disruptions.

Being a jury member at the Zinnov Awards 2023, where tech centres are recognised for their exceptional contribution to value creation across global organisations, do you think global capability and shared services centres are better poised to enable global enterprises in their digital transformation initiatives as compared to partnering with a third-party service provider? Why or why not?

Most GCCs are still on the enabling side of the enterprise-wide digital transformation journey instead of leading the digital strategy completely.

However, this journey varies based on the organisation's maturity, and at AGS, after four years of incubation, we are currently at the helm of Alcon's central digital transformation strategy. Overall, GCCs and shared services centres have the capabilities to lead the path of global digital transformation.

I would like to answer this question with an analogy of a motorbike with two synchronised wheels, where one is our GCCs and the other is the third-party service providers. Both wheels bring in specialised capabilities and need to work in sync. While the in-house teams could be leveraged to focus on the strategic organisational values and culture, the third-party partners could be used as consultants with broader experience and know-how from an enablement perspective. There needs to be a balance of capabilities and a shared vision that is synchronised toward the common goal, and that is what we are doing at Alcon.

One of the key challenges, which may sound simple but is very relevant, is the process of managing stakeholders' expectations across the larger global team within the organisation. Ensuring that we have the proper mechanism to address the changing and diverse expectations of new leaders during the process of ongoing CX enablement is a constant challenge.

Secondly, with the rate at which customer expectations are evolving, we will always have to be agile to introduce last-minute tweaks while taking any new CX feature to the market.

These are the two things that come to the top of my mind, apart from the generic issue of finding the right talent.

Before we wrap up, take us through the three must-checks, or more, that every digital transformation plan needs to follow to ensure successful digital CX accomplishments.

The top one, for me, is the adoption rate of any digital transformation initiative. We should ensure that the change is adopted well both in the customer experience ecosystem and within the organisation to consider the initiative effective.

Secondly, selecting the software checklist is crucial for successful digital CX accomplishments.

The third would be ensuring that the culture of agility in production and deployment is present within the team, since with the new normal, the MVP defined at the start may be only partially relevant at the time of the final go-to-market.

Books that Vineet recommends

• The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M.R. Covey
• Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
• The Power of Humility by PV Ramana Murthy
• Uplifting Service: The Proven Path to Delighting Your Customers, Colleagues, and Everyone Else You Meet by Ron Kaufman