Working Relentlessly Behind The Scenes
Atul Pratap, who has been with the Adani Group for over four years, handling multiple roles driving process- and technology-led strategic initiatives, has been heading F&A Shared Services in Adani Group serving diverse business verticals comprising Energy, Logistics, FMCG and Real Estate since 2017.
“Adani F&A Shared Services has been pivotal in centralising and optimising back-end processes so that frontline team can focus on business operations and growth. F&A Shared Services have consistently delivered 20-30 per cent YoY efficiency gains through process re-engineering, simplification and new technology implementation,” says Pratap on the long term sustained progress of Adani Group and how his role has actually led to value creation for the group.
Speaking about his role as F&A Shared Services Head, Pratap says, “In line with Adani Group philosophy ‘Thinking Big Doing Better’, F&A Shared Services has embarked on digital transformation journey with robotic automation, AI, API banking, mobility and cloud-based applications, to bring agility, scalability, cost optimisation accelerated through operational analytics. There is enormous excitement within Adani ecosystem for imbibing new thoughts and pushing the limits with cutting edge technology in whatever we do.”
“We are at advanced stage of robotic process automation (RPA) with the objective to bring next wave of efficiency, controls and speed of execution. We combined our process expertise with RPA technology to high end F&A processes, which hitherto was limited to manufacturing industry,” say Pratap. The intention is to create in-house scalable and agile Centre of Excellence (CoE), which not only caters to the finance function but other services also like HR, Admin, Procurement, Stores, MDM, Marketing and other corporate functions, adds Pratap, who has often aided the CEO of the company, and has brought about multiple changes in the organisation with his current role.
With respect to the challenges that Pratap has faced in the company during his tenure as the Head of F&A Shared Services in Adani Group, Pratap says that the challenge has been to balance efficient service delivery while driving innovation to keep pace with fast paced growth of the business both vertically and horizontally. “This also gets accentuated with changing digital technology continuum and availability of functionally savvy technical resources,” he says.
Naturally, with his role in the digital transformation of the company, Pratap has been a critical player in making key decisions that have helped his company excel. On being asked about these key decisions Pratap says, “In hindsight, few things that worked in our favour were sticking to the market leaders in the technological domains, keeping confidence on in-house functional experts to upgrade them in new technologies and most importantly re-engineer processes to adapt to technological changes being brought about by RPA”.
Prior to his stint in Adani Group, Pratap has had two decades of corporate and consulting experience driving multiple initiatives in SSC Transformation for Fortune 100 companies. He has even donned senior controllership and consulting roles with Genpact, Oberoi Hotels & Resorts, NTPC & Holcim.
Pratap’s hobbies include playing cricket and he also has a keen interest in movies, food and travelling, which he believes are “great stress busters”.
