From the Desk of SNS

Dear Colleagues,

Every crisis throws up a plethora of opportunities and this challenge we are facing right now isn’t any different. The time is ripe to unearth opportunities as an organization to prove our mettle in the face of some stiff odds, to show what we are made of, to reveal the depth and strength of our character, our ability to dig deep into our reserves to hold strong and remain committed in our resolve to come through with flying colours.

As an organization, we have always encouraged fearlessness to venture into unchartered waters, boldness to question status quo, to make mistakes by trying the untried and still be unafraid to keep trying till you succeed. These times are tailor-​made for such a mindset for the enterprise to confidently play off the front foot and take challenges head on to emerge stronger as we move towards achieving our strategic ‘Lakshya’ goals.

This issue of ECC News features a set of ‘Efficiency Champions’ from across businesses who have sought, found and availed off such opportunities to make a difference; who with their innovative thinking, tireless efforts, never-​say-​die attitude and with the unstinted support of their seniors and colleagues, have improved productivity at their projects or functions. The best part is that they have found these opportunities in every aspect of project management, planning, finance, procurement, asset management, administration, talent acquisition and retention, etc. Their efforts have translated into myriad ways of reducing costs, cutting overheads, minimizing wastage, avoiding rework, improving productivity and thereby enhancing efficiencies.

Every project, function and department of L&T Construction can contribute towards this organization wide programme. It is the time for every employee irrespective of position, cadre or seniority to put up their hand and be counted. We just need to remain calm, focused and, at the same time, keep our minds ticking to think of ways we can work and function more efficiently when normalcy returns.

I seek each of you to be an Efficiency Champion in your own right. Only then will the cumulative impact of all our ideas make a significant difference to our top and bottom lines.

As the foremost priority, it is important to protect ourselves and our customers to communicate with complete transparency and place emphasis on safety measures, adherence to global health guidelines and support communities by leveraging resources. The need of the hour is to stabilize our operations to the ‘New Normal’, build contingency operational plans and iterate the same as the crisis unfolds. As the market scenario shapes itself towards a revenue decline, we need to build on mitigation actions with extreme downside scenarios, analyse and prioritise to gear up with our operational flow charts for efficiency enhancement. We need to take a customer centric view of this situation, on how we will build trust, loyalty and market share through and beyond. It is the time to plan to leapfrog expectations and define ways to outperform competitors, even beyond this crisis to meet customer expectations and achieve customer delight.

Our focus and investments in technology have already started to make a vital difference across various projects and functions. The fact that we are still connected to carry out our work as before despite being scattered across various geographies, is testimony to our technological advancements. Our various digital initiatives and their energetic implementation at ground level have been yielding encouraging results. As the impact of our digital solutions has spread, so also have the levels of acceptance increased and we have been taking purposeful strides towards developing a data-​driven mindset. Our digital officers are championing the merits of digitalization across the board but we need more digital champions to make it count.