Leading business process outsourcing (BPO) firm Genpact has roped in professors from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow to give its employees lessons in management skills and improving productivity.

Through electronically enabled interactive sessions, workers at Genpact’s operation hubs in Delhi, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Jaipur will learn the finer nuances of management, soft skills and strategic planning from senior professors of the business school.

This is an e-certificate programme in general management (e-CPGM) and there are 119 participants, most of whom have worked for one to three years.

“The objective of this programme is to develop managerial capabilities among people who are at the early stages of their career to enable them to effectively undertake managerial responsibilities,” said Ajay Singh, course director of IIM Lucknow.

The programme is divided into 12 modules. Keeping in mind the requirements of the industry, the modules are designed to create managerial and leadership competence among the professionals. There are 120 hours of e-enabled interactive sessions.

Singh said the programme was being run from IIM Lucknow’s Noida campus, which was being developed as a centre of excellence in the area of executive education.

The India headquartered Genpact operates service delivery centres in India, China, Hungary, Mexico, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and the US.

For Indian Business Schools with global ambitions, Singapore is fast, hot as a goal. Earlier this year, IIM Bangalore announced its plans for the creation of a campus. And now Mumbai-based SP Jain Institute of Management and Research expects to likewise.

If this SP Jain overall the second incursion within two years. In 2004, the Institute has a campus in Dubai and was the first to offer a full residential full-time MBA program in the Middle East. Beflügelt by its success, it now has its sights on Singapore.

It is interesting to note that both SP Jain and IIM-B-plane orientation of the Indian diaspora in Singapore. Nearly 7.9 percent of 4 million people of Singapore are of Indian origin, this is the third ethnic group by the Chinese (76.8 percent) and Malays (13.9 percent).

IIM-B is planning to target the leaders to work in Singapore is short-term programmes Executive Education and Executive MBA, while SP Jain can be full-time program or an Executive MBA. “What are we going programmes make a bit of localization,” says ML Shrikant, dean of volunteers, SP Jain. “There will be a strong component of India programmes, such as the Modern World increasingly interested in India in the region, “she added.

Both IIM-B and SP Jain plan to fly down right in India. This could lead to a serious crisis of the resource, especially for SP Jain, given that the same option is also Deputy Director of Dubai. “This is probably a lot more pressure on resources, therefore we are in the process of the Faculty employs more,” said Shrikant

NOW that the IIMs have more or less ruled out a legal recourse against the HRD Ministry’s directive to impose a fee cut in their PGP (Post-Graduate Programmes) courses, the country’s premier business schools are busy considering various options to make up for this revenue loss.

“One of the options before us is to increase the number of Management Development Programmes (MDPs),” said Prof Prakash G. Apte, Director, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

In an exclusive interview with Business Line today, he said that the board of governors would meet in the next four days. “IIM-Bangalore will work out its finances then. We have not yet received the break-up for the planned and non-planned grants.”

But would increasing the number of management development programmes not impose a huge load on the already over-burdened professors who are handling various PG courses, executive education programmes and consultancy assignments?

(IIM-Bangalore, for instance, has about 70 professors for 700 students (400 in the PGP, 300 in the PGP in Software Management and 40 PhD students) and this year, the institute has conducted about 45 MDPs.)

Prof Apte said that they might even consider reducing the number of offerings for the students so that more staff time is available for corporate training programmes.

On whether the institute would recruit more teachers, he said: “Yes, that would be one option,” but expressed doubt about finding the right kind of talent in the industry.

But this too would require Government permission. And what about additional funds for the salaries? With the cut in allocation in this year’s Interim Budget - from Rs 79.73 crore last year to Rs 45 crore in 2004-05 - the IIMs would have to tread this path carefully.

Meanwhile, the Government is also insisting that the IIMs increase intake of students.

This might be one way of boosting their revenues, but Prof Apte said: “We can take about 40 more students, provided we have the right infrastructure like hostel rooms, mess, etc.”

“It is important for people at the middle level to be exposed to broader thinking and to integrate perspective. Mid-career training programmes enable executives to constantly read, reflect and relate.”

It may sound like a platitude, but in today’s business environment what executives need most is the ability to manage change. Faced with the hard realities of globalisation, liberalisation, deregulation, end-user assertiveness and high-paced technology, with hardly any response time, they need to use this skill the most. Learning, relearning, and sometimes, unlearning, are the only three ways to advancement in career paths. Therefore mid-career management education has become imperative.

Says Dr Sudhi Seshadri, Professor, Marketing Area, and Chairperson, Executive Education, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, “I have been watching the executive education programmes since 1991 and I find that Indian companies have become increasingly professional in their approach.”

He thinks, now, Indian corporates realise they have to upgrade the skills of their managers for two reasons: a better market share and to retain talent. There is no dearth of supply (trainers, programmes, ideas) or demand (companies, entrepreneurs, government) in this area.

For instance, take IFMR (Institute for Financial Management and Research), Chennai, which takes its manager-trainees through a programme called ‘retooling’. Says IFMR’s Prof G. Balasubramanian, “Such programmes give them an opportunity to reflect on business trends and concepts and their relevance today.”

This, the institution achieves through knowledge sharing, interactive sessions, debates on cost management, behavioural sciences and marketing.

On ‘reskilling’ needs, he says that at a certain stage in their careers, people need to brush up on their fundamentals. “It is important for people at the middle level to be exposed to broader thinking and to integrate perspective. And mid-career training programmes enable executives to constantly read, reflect and relate,” he adds.

The role of organisational motivation can never be overemphasised in today’s dynamic corporate world. Says Latha Ramakrishnan of Laras - Regional Master Licensee, South India for Leadership Management International (LMI), “Mid-career training programmes are relevant now because if you look at competition, it is very easy to match pricing, technology and quality. The only challenge that companies face today is the effectiveness of their employees.” And this can be met through upgrading their skills.

The Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIMC) is all set to enter a collaboration with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (Cima), to jointly establish a National Centre for Management Accounting.

The intention is to shape international best practices in the area of management accounting, which, along with enterprise governance, is a core strength of Cima, a leading membership body that offers an internationally recognised professional qualification in management accountancy.

For Cima, which has over 1,55,000 students and a presence in some 158 countries, this proposal to IIM-C is a means of building up its presence in India. Later, it also plans to set up a few regional hubs.

IIM-C already has a Centre for Corporate Governance, which will work with the new IIMC-Cima National Centre for Management Accounting to support Cima’s initiatives in the area of enterprise governance.

“The Cima authorities felt that there was a synergy between the two and discussions between us have almost reached the final stages,” Asish K Bhattacharyya, professor of finance and control and co-ordinator, Centre for Corporate Governance, told ET.

“The Centre will conduct research, prepare and publish papers in international journals, conduct field studies and case studies, hold international conferences and train corporate executives,” he added.

During ‘07-08, the Centre will launch a one-year certificate programme on Financial Statement Analysis and Business Valuation. This apart, the Centre will also offer short duration executive education programmes in the area of management accounting.

For senior managers, there will be the following training programmes: strategic cost management and financial statement analysis and business valuation.

THREE months before Prof Nick Binedell, founding director of the University of Pretoria’s (UP’s) Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs), opened the doors to SA’s youngest business school in January 2000 he showed Laurie Dippenaar, co-founder of the FirstRand Group, around the Gibs campus in Illovo, Johannesburg.

“It was still under construction. It looked like Kosovo. He looked around and, after about five minutes, he said, ‘Big investment, high fixed costs and bugger all income,’ and I had two sleepless nights,” says Binedell.

The sleepless nights are a thing of the past . In just eight years Gibs has become a world-class institution. In fact it reached that status five years ago when — in the first year it took part in the Financial Times business school rankings for executive education — it made the list of the world’s top 40 business schools in 2004, coming in at place 40.

This year Gibs was placed 38th on the pink paper’s list, which has now expanded to 45 business schools.

It all began with a slip of paper Binedell handed to Sanlam CEO Johan van Zyl, then vice-chancellor and principal of UP about 10 years ago.

Binedell had just stepped down from his six-year tenure as director of the University of the Witwatersrand Business School and was not sure what his next step should be.

After a chance meeting with Van Zyl he jotted down on the paper “a few thoughts” on his stipulations for a new business school. These included that it should be in the continent’s business hub, Sandton; that it should be autonomous; and that it should be “a business school for the 21st century”.

The autonomy bit was important, but not something Binedell thought any university would accept. UP did, however, and Gibs was born.

“The level of autonomy we’ve had is unusual and we’ve partly been successful because of it. A business school needs independence because it must move at least at the speed of business and it must be governed in a way that allows it to move at that speed,” he says.

Then followed a series of coffee meetings with SA’s top CEOs, during which Binedell quizzed them about what they thought about SA’s competitiveness, and the link between their strategy and the development of their executive teams — questions pertinent to setting up a curriculum. He also found himself the recipient of R52m from UP to build the school.

“It was a bit of a record. We found the land, built the building, recruited the faculty, got the students and opened the doors in 16 months…. I was working six- or seven-day weeks. It was a big risk; there were well-established business schools in the area and some people were sceptical about the need for another school,” says Binedell.

Invaluable financial aid and moral support came from Sir Donald Gordon — the founder of the Liberty Group and the man after whom the school is named — and his family.

On that slip of paper Binedell gave to Van Zyl was another stipulation: that the new business school should be world class from the word go.

Binedell, who, armed with a plastic model of the school that was still being built, had persuaded 45 people to do their Masters of Business Administration (MBA), then also threw himself into persuading staff from top international business schools such as Harvard, the London Business School, France’s Insead and New York University’s Stern Business School to guest lecture at Gibs.

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