The conference room is filled with heavy air. Everybody seems have a question mark slapped on their faces. The silence is awkward, somewhat scary. I wonder if there is something I have missed out during the week.
Last couple of weeks has been quite busy for me, mostly due to personal reasons. My little one is going to start her prep school. It is so hard to get an admission in a good school. I haven’t left any stone unturned. There is an assurance from one of the top schools in the city, but they are expensive. I know it is going to be hard, but cannot let go the opportunity.
Just yesterday my bank called me to collect the home loan approval papers. Finally the EMIs are here. It feels good to be settled.
‘Good morning guys’, a heavy voice breaks the minute long silence. It is my boss. Dressed in Friday casuals, he looks as elegant as ever. He asks everyone to take seats. There is no computer or power point charts. A sense of anticipation is pervasive across the conference room. All eyes are set at the rare end of the table where Boss is seated.
‘Thank you all for making it to the meeting.’ There is a substance in his voice.
‘Our business analytics competency is a great success. Over last five years we were able to reduce the data errors by 70% and improve forecasting by 80%. This was possible due to your hard work and ability to embrace new automation technologies. ’ he is speaking fast, almost without a pause.
‘However our operational costs as a competency center have gone up several folds during last five years. We have invested heavily in new talents as well as on new technologies.’ he takes a pause and leans forward to get a glass of water.
I can see he is trying to make a point but fail to figure out what it is.
He continues, ‘our leadership team is under tremendous pressure to increase profitability. The new analytics system installed at our competency recently revealed a need to optimize our costs. It turned out as a result of recent automation of our data analysis and reporting process we have freed up significant bandwidth for the business analytics team.’
He takes one more pause and looks around the room. There is absolute silence. Nobody wants to guess what’s coming.
‘Our new intelligent automated system not only produces faster reports and but offers more variety and granularity. Data quality too has improved due to integrated networked system resulting improved forecasting capabilities and predictability.’
Suddenly there was brightness on his face. Last two sentences reflected a lot of pride in his voice.
‘Our leadership team has indicated it is a time to relook at the business competency center, particularly on resource utilization rate. The new system is able to do twenty member jobs alone at one fourth of time and twice better accuracy.’
He picked up his water glass and emptied at once. For the first time people in the room started looking at each other.
‘I am afraid we are asked to right size.’ There is almost a sense of apology in his voice.
I feel a cold sensation running through my spine. Or is it hot? May be! I cannot figure what it is. A cluster of random thoughts run passes my mind. May be I need some fresh air.
No comments:
Post a Comment