<div>Head of international marketing at workforce management firm Kronos, <strong>Chris Marjara </strong>(47) says Indian companies should stop looking at people as just a cost and take it as competitive advantage. He talks to <strong>BW Online's Sanjitha Rao Chaini </strong>in Mumbai.<br /><br /><strong>What brings you to India?<br /></strong>It’s a customer visit. We regularly visit our customers to keep our pulse on what's changing in these companies, how is the market involving and whether are we meeting our commercial objectives. And what do we need to do to invest in more business going forward. We are renewing and expanding contracts with existing customers now.<br /><br /><strong>You’re just back from Shanghai. Tell us about your China experience.<br /></strong>It is a big market for us. We have about 100 customers there. Like in India, in China we target manufacturing, services and retail. A little more in manufacturing, as China is a manufacturing heartland. We get a lot more interest in our solutions as labour costs in China have been growing faster than in India, affecting its competitiveness for manufacturing.<br /><br />Many companies are now moving manufacturing from China to other South-east Asian countries. And India could take some of that. I see that both economies want to improve labour standards. The issue of productivity is present in both the emerging and mature markets. As living standards rise, both economies want the consumers to start spending money and boost growth.<br /><br /><strong>How important is India in your business?<br /></strong>Latest statistics show productivity is reducing in India. That has huge implications on competitiveness of Indian firms. But we are seeing great interest in improving productivity in India. It can be a key competitive advantage for Indian companies if they could invest in their people and see that as the difference and be competitive. To be competitive, companies need to focus on productivity. And that means reducing labour costs, which isn't sustainable. I have heard a lot about how Indian companies are taking on lower cost manufacturing services coming out of, say, China. But as a competitive advantage, you cannot always be the lowest labour cost economy. You want to try and improve the living standards of your people. You have to try and increase investment and the consumption and production and grow the economy.<br /><br />We see a lot of labour cost is going up. So are the wages. It's happening dramatically in places such as China. Productivity is the key here. You can invest in machinery and plants and get automation -- but that's quite expensive -- to improve productivity. And not everyone can invest like that. So improve manpower efficiency. What India has in abundance is people. I am a firm believer that people can make the difference and give India its competitive advantage. So, companies need to stop looking at people as just a cost. They need to start looking at people as competitive advantage, how to make use of the skilled, abundant work force to their advantage, and use that to their fullest effect.<br /><br />We see India as a key growth market for work force management solutions given the size of its labour force. We see India and China very similar in terms of their maturity in using these solutions. We have been in India since 2007, and have seen our market share grow here gradually. We have 75 customers such as Bharat Forge, Dr. Reddy’s, PVR Cinemas, Genpact, and MNCs like Nokia. In the retail and services area, we have companies like such as Croma. We are seeing that a lot of Indian companies recognise they can offer a really differentiated products or services by focusing on their people and, in turn, differentiate themselves from the competition. The advantage of a work force management solution is you can make sure you have the right people at the right place at the right time with the right skills.<br /><br /><strong>So what are your plans for this market?<br /></strong>Kronos has operations in 100 countries. We are nearly $1 billion in revenues and have nearly 20,000 customers. In India, we want to double the size of the business in two years, from the current $5 million. We are at the tipping point when it comes to adoption of our solutions because of the dynamics involved. We are focussing on some of the significant verticals in the industry - manufacturing, services and retail. These sectors can really take advantage of our solutions.<br /><br />Yes, we have to convince companies in these sectors of the tangible business value they get out of our solutions. And this is what more and more companies are recognising that they can save money by controlling the labour costs. This is what a manufacturer would do, be it Dr. Reddy's or Bharat Forge. They know exactly when people are arriving at work, what they do during the day, and they know when people aren't there too. So, now they have a far better control on payroll and labour costs. So for a manufacturer, if his staff is working on a production line, he needs to know just exactly how many were working on that particular line during the day. And how profitable were those production lines. Now we can track and analyse and report on labour costs on individual production lines.<br /><br /><strong>Obviously, this involves a huge technology intervention...<br /></strong>We provide a complete solution including technology. And we help the companies implement the solutions. We have experts delivering best practices in delivering all of these applications. We provide technology in the form of biometric data terminals where people can scan their finger prints to let them know it's you who's coming into the production line and our software can help you allocate the people, schedule the production line and optimise it. Automated systems help reduce the time that it takes do it manually. Real time information also helps you make key decisions in terms of optimising where you put people.<br /><br /><strong>But won’t there be issues of privacy?<br /></strong>From an employee's point of view, they add value to the system. Using the technology, employees gain self service - be it leave requests, looking up on their schedules, placing shift change requests, etc. This is just being compliant with the normal regulations that, perhaps, were not implemented in the manual system. It's productivity that's important.<br /><br /> We don't get involved in hiring decisions. But our systems tell companies who are their top performers and then how can they codify that. And what are the personality traits you need to be looking for when hiring people. What these systems enable you to do is apply the information into your interview techniques, framing questionnaires and gives you data that says this is what a top performer looks like. The companies could look for top performers based on data from workforce management solutions coupled with talent management system. And we could help these companies in identifying the top performers and put them during the peak hours in their store - for instance, Saturday afternoons or other weekend hours -- to drive sales. However, this is private information and not shared with any other organisation. The company owns the data within the system. We could measure a team's process and skill sets, for instance, in a BPO, and the time they take to complete a project and apply that to hiring information.<br /><br /><strong>In this context, how do you look at the attrition rates in India?<br /></strong>Skilled work force is hugely in demand. Even though India has a huge work force, the amount of skilled work force available is in short supply. Companies always want the best talent. There is always a war for talent and companies will pay more for that. And that means, if you are in that category, you will be in demand. Some people change jobs every couple of years and that increases their pay. That's a challenge in most companies, because they invest in training and development of their employees but then they see them walk out after a couple of years.<br /><br />But there is no easy way to fix that. What companies could do is make the work environment as enticing as possible for retention. Make sure employees are engaged and your company is innovative; and this is where talent management strategies play a role. Especially in the IT and services sectors. Here, people have been moving around a lot. And companies are now investing on strategies such as cafeteria, gyms, and so on to keep employees engaged and thus reduce attrition.<br /><br /><strong>The recent slowdown must have helped you considering companies want better productivity...<br /></strong>The good thing about our solutions is we can help companies during their good times and also during their difficult times when they want to control costs or improve productivity. During slowdown, companies think of ways to remain competitive and we help them achieve that.</div>
