GroupSynergy the consultants helping to rewrite the history of the Karur Bus Industry, are a team of hard core professionals. A consulting organization headquartered in Pune, GroupSynergy has multi-location operations pan-India.
While exploring the ‘Karur’ story, I discovered a thick pointer leading to Mr. M. Balaji Rao (Head Strategic Management) & Mr. Ganesh Vaidhyanathan (Vice President – Organization Development), the latter heading the initiative now known as “Clusters” internally at GroupSynergy.
This lean team of professionals (core team comprises of 17 consultants), collectively represents a formidable depth and breadth of knowledge/experience covering such diverse industries as plastics, light engineering, heavy engineering, communications, industrial consumables, agro, hospitality, banking, finance and a whole range of service industries. In fact a sizeable number owe their core experience and exposure to Tata Motors, MercedesBenz, Thermax, Hyundai, Mahindra & Mahindra, Ashok Leyland, BEML, etc., all of whom are industry leaders in their own businesses.
GroupSynergy core business verticals are five in number, viz., Strategy Development & Implementation, Manufacturing Processes & Technology Upgrades, People Development, HR Outsourcing, and Customized Video Interventions.
As Balaji says: “It is not the size of the Client that matters. We almost always choose to work on the Size of the Dream that the Client has”.
Expanding this, Vaidhyanathan further adds: “The content, depth, duration, pleasures, pains and finally the color of the Dream, actually determines a wholesome menu for us to work-on, while dealing with the Clients”.
In several cases, GroupSynergy starts simply with a humble sales team empowerment through focused workshops and programs (say, for the client’s own officers and further to the channel partners) or a 5-S implementation Program, eventually working its way into multiple strategic areas of the clients, such as product strategies and launch, manufacturing process upgrades including new technologies and JV, and developing a talent bank that would steer the client company in the next decade or beyond.
The key strengths of GroupSynergy lie in their extraordinary focus on Client Hand Holding. It goes as far as it would take, in most cases a 2 to 3 years client-engagement that eventually results in a long-term hand shake. Thus Sunil Patel, Director, proudly says: “We start with a Client and finally end up creating advocates and mentors”.
It all started when about five years back with some of the core team members left their promising careers to support the smaller companies which could not afford the big consulting companies but had large dreams that needed professional support. Thus was born GroupSynergy. Focusing on strategy development and support on implementation – was the mantra. “A mediocre strategy with great implementation is far more effective than a great strategy with lackluster implementation”. It is critical that the client is supported on the implementation of the strategy.
Implementation of the strategy also means conducting workshops for enhancing the skills and knowledge levels of the employees. This created a separate vertical with in GroupSynergy named people development.
GroupSynergy takes up projects on a holistic pattern – “Training is not about imparting knowledge to the participants – neither the participants nor the company is benefitted by this – training should focus on how the knowledge can be converted to action by the participants – hence GroupSynergy does not do any stand-alone training programs. They discourage their clients to do training programs in an assorted manner. No stand-alone programs on say negotiation or communication, etc”.
GroupSynergy creates a course content for the company at various levels and then goes about implementing the course in a systematic manner. There are feed-backs that are taken from the immediate senior on how much of the inputs have been implemented by the participant – say, after 30-60 days. Only on satisfactory implementation is the participant allowed to take up the next program.
The workshops are not about a case study that happened in Brazil or Russia – it is all about their own company – it is very specific to the day-to-day issues. This makes it a very unique approach.
The same model is adopted in the case of training the channel partners. “You cannot change the way the last member of your chain will work by conducting a two-day program in a year. You need to train them every week”, says Sowjanya, Head Creative Insights, GroupSynergy.
But, this is a very costly approach. To solve this GroupSynergy started creating video films that show how the process can be handled – how one needs to interact – they use TV artist to get it dramatized. “We have full-fledged in-house facilities for script-writing, shooting the film, editing and embellishments. We deliver the programs in 8 Indian languages”, says Sowjanya. The channel partners can use the film to train their teams on a weekly basis.
GroupSynergy has created about 14 films for various companies as of date. We are now releasing a series of the video aided management series in the market – “you can expect them to hit the stands by January 2009 end”, adds Sowjanya.
Mind boggling as one would put it, GroupSynergy indeed has an impressive client line-up (or mentors, if one could choose to call it) to boast of, that reads like a who’s who of the Indian industry spectrum, including names such as, Tata Motors, Piaggio, Mahindra & Mahindra, Kotak Bank, Hyva, Vodafone, Bosch, BK Tyres, Minda, etc.
Of their future plans in the next five years, Balaji detailed in no uncertain terms that GroupSynergy is keen to register a high-growth presence in the core sector, manufacturing sector and service sectors and a focused and continuous partnership with the Cluster Development Programs of the Union and State Governments.
These two strategies addressed to their domestic business plan, GroupSynergy also has an aggressive action plan to launch itself on the international scene starting 2009.
