Sankaran V is a passionate management professional and researcher with 29 years of rich experience in the field of strategic operating model advisory, transformational process consulting, quality management and enhancement, process improvement and leadership competency development and coaching programme. His experience spans across multiple industry domains such as information technology, manufacturing, engineering, services and education. He has worked with Global Capability Centres - GCCs in designing, building and deploying operating models in alignment with HQ standards.
He specialises in the strategic quality management and process improvement advisory solutions part of Business Excellence practice with Corporate Services. He spearheads tools ranging from strategic operating model improvement initiatives using global standards and frameworks. Sankaran has been actively leading a plethora of consulting engagements with 70+ talented SME consultants . Broadly, the consulting engagements includes operational model alignment, benchmarking services, value enablement programme to acquire credentials based on internationally recognised competency models, organisational assessment of strategic alignment with execution to derive sustainable business value, execution and delivery of transformational assignments, and people practices assessment, and benchmarking to provide valuable recommendations. He closely works with the leadership team and improvement program office in providing deep consulting to align and enable achieving the enterprise objectives. Sankaran is fluent with global benchmarking models such as scaled agile framework for enterprise, SCRUM Aagile, Ppeople CMM, ISO standards, CMMI, European Foundation for Quality Management, Lean 6σ and design thinking. He has led many successful engagements in-line with organisational capability building programme with the blend of enablement, assessment and consulting scope of work. He has been conducting various management workshops from the year 1997 onwards as part of his overall experience range. Given the combination of his experience evolving from industry and consulting space, Sankaran is familiar with various technology-based interventions and accelerators. His consulting scope also includes evaluating variety of technological applications around the space of portfolio/programme/project management, tools development, delivery and execution, process and quality management executing engagements. He has served clients across the globe. He has developed models based on multiple frameworks focused on business and delivery value.
Engagement experience
Advisory and consulting services: Sankaran has facilitated numerous organisations in the operating model design in-line with organisational objectives. Have designed and developed consulting solutions and workshops based on international standards/models. Spearheaded the development of solutions such as voice of customer, people-CMM based competency framework services, delivery transformation through cognitive quality, SAFe agile transformation, design thinking tenets and methods excellence based on combined frameworks. Developed competency dictionary of select business critical roles, evaluation cum assessment methods and associated instruments, conducted the assessment for members, designed and recommended individual development programme. Led voice of customer engagements in multiple stages such as initiation, progressive and engagement closure to evaluate operating models to determine areas of improvements. As part of transformational consulting scope of work, Sankaran has leveraged principles and premise of design thinking along with SAFe agile framework leading to building organisational capabilities in applying design thinking philosophy around service design and development. He has advised a variety of his clients to apply a blend of failure and success-based design using customer centric approach in tool development and deployment to achieve customer aligned objectives.
Workshops and Coaching: Conducted variety of leadership workshops and coaching sessions for the leadership and middle management team in adapting organisational transformation projects. Workshop sessions include business agility, transformational leadership, competency management and enablement, alignment of unit-level goals to organisational strategic objectives and alignment of operating model with business needs and objectives.
Benchmarking and enablement services: Sankaran has conducted numerous organisational benchmarking evaluation using internationally recognised frameworks and have trained thousands of professionals on models such as CMMI, People CMM, Statistical process control techniques, quantitative model techniques, project management programme and total quality management concepts. Sankaran closely works with reputed institutions such as ISACA to deliver joint workshops on advanced individual certification programme and develop/update profound global models and frameworks.
Thought leadership and articles published
- Published paper on ‘Performance Management – A New Millennium’ as part of post graduation course at LIBA; ‘Business Impact Through the PCMM’ in the India Vantage, November 2006 issue. India Vantage is a KPMG in India driven global industry awareness newsletter. Presented ‘Project excellence through CMMI’ in the Commerce chamber at Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Journal on ‘Driving Transformational Change through Organisational Culture’ published through SAGE Journals, journal article on ‘Value Promulgation – Imperative for Organizational Cultural Alignment’, article on ‘Orchestrating Cohesive Process Improvement program to achieve sustainable business growth’ in The International Journal of Analytical and Experimental Modal analysis (IJAEMA), article on ‘An International Study on Servitisation-Centric Business Model’ in the Science, Technology and Development Journal
- PhD thesis on ‘Impact of Organizational Culture in achieving sustainable business growth in IT sector’. Published Thought Leadership article on ‘Business Excellence through Process Maturity’ and Theme Article on ‘Operational Excellence through effective People Practices’ in CSI Communications
- Supported the publication of Thought Leadership article on ‘Business Success through Structured Competency Management’; ‘Business Excellence and ROI based process maturity-Global Insights’; ‘Quality Governance of Enterprise Management System’; ‘Business success as a function of Structured Competency management’; ‘A Capability improvement framework to disrupt, transform and innovate’
- Part of Industry bodies such as NASSCOM, CII Connect and Chennai SPIN. Worked with ISACA working group on CMMI for People, CMMI with DevSecOps, Digital Trust and CMMI for AI
- Presented and been part of panel discussions in Industry forums such as SPIN, Service Knowledge Base forum, KPMG in India’s PRIME-Q events, East West Advisors webinar panel, KMA Panel moderator for Digital Summit and New generation communication conclave, GSDC & IQA panelists on ESG, PMI Kerala Chapter speaker
- Spoke as a guest lecturer on business and leadership at premier institutions such as BIMTECH, SIOM, Indian Institute of Management (IIM Indore), WE School of Management, MIT-WPU, Rishihood University
- Co-authored a book on Design Thinking: A Hands-on Approach.