Released on = October 9, 2006, 2:03 am

Press Release Author = Supriya Kulkarni/Neeti Rastogi/QAI India Ltd.

Industry = Management

Press Release Summary = QAI India, a process improvement firm for operational
excellence today announced the launch of first of its kind "Center of Excellence for
Global Workforce Strategy and Development" in Bangalore. The Center of Excellence
will be set up in collaboration with Bill Curtis, Guru, and Co Author of People
Capability Model® (People CMM®), the Capability Maturity Model® (CMM®) and Business
Process Maturity Model (BPMM).




Press Release Body = Bangalore (9 Oct, 06): QAI India, a process improvement firm
for operational excellence today announced the launch of first of its kind "Center
of Excellence for Global Workforce Strategy and Development" in Bangalore. The
Center of Excellence will be set up in collaboration with Bill Curtis, Guru, and Co
Author of People Capability Model® (People CMM®), the Capability Maturity Model®
(CMM®) and Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM).



The Center of Excellence has formed a strategic partnership in the area of research,
innovation and publications with the Indian School of Business' Centre for IT and
the Networked Economy (CITNE). This strategic partnership is designed to leverage
the research orientation of CITNE and the real world experiences and deep expertise
and process capabilities of QAI, along with the thought leadership of Bill Curtis.



The Center of Excellence, with an objective of addressing the area of workforce
strategy and development and talent-based innovation, will leverage the widely
acclaimed People CMM® framework by:



Undertaking activities such as research, publication and product and IP creation.



Helping create a global community of practitioners, linked by a knowledge repository
of best practices.



Providing People CMM® consulting, training and assessment services to organizations
across industries worldwide.



The launch of Center of Excellence will be followed by a series of events and
trainings slated for October, 2006 in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangalore, Chennai,
Delhi, Mumbai, and London along with Bill Curtis.



Underscoring the need for such a platform, Navyug Mohnot, CEO, QAI India said, \" I
am delighted on the formation of the Global Centre of Excellence. I am convinced
that an initiative such as this one will contribute to the organization\'s ability to
create an agile and innovative workforce. Given the structure and the dynamics that
are shaping organizations, redefining the meaning of work and reshaping the flow of
talent, the issues that the Centre will address become not just relevant, but
critical for success and long term well being of organizations.\"



Commenting on the launch, Bill Curtis said, " Center of Excellence gives us an
ability to organize the talent required to support the global roll out of People
CMM®. Over the next year we will be bringing new products and services to market to
support organizations in using the People CMM® to improve their workforce strategy
and practices. In addition, we will undertake research in critical areas to advance
our knowledge of the most effective strategies and practices for improving workforce
capability."



In a further joint initiative CITNE at ISB will introduce a graduate (PhD) student
residency program designed to provide outstanding researchers the opportunity to
pursue rigorous applied research that benefits the Indian ICT industry and is
targeted for publication in top journals.



Speaking about the strategic partnership, Dr. Ravi Bapna of ISB said, "we have
ignored the knowledge creation or research aspect of our educational system for too
long. Creating a culture of research and innovation requires a significant
commitment and a long-term view from all stakeholders. This is a fantastic example
of an industry-academia linkage necessary to create the next generation of knowledge
workers."



Need for an Innovation Ecosystem



Nations, societies and organizations realize that widespread, institutionalized,
structured and repeatable Innovation leads to enhanced competitiveness, a higher
standard of living and accelerated development.



We all know that there are several facets of the Innovation Ecosystem. Importantly
there are several determinants of how these facets get created, why certain groups
of people are more innovative than others, and why we know often where in the world
the next great idea is likely to come from.



Some of the principal determinants of the Innovation Ecosystem are - Investments,
Infrastructure and the People. Copious research has been done on the affects of a
conducive Infrastructure, notably the Information and Communications Technology
(ICT) infrastructure. And plenty of capital is readily available today to invest in
innovative ideas and approaches. However precious little is being done to understand
and enhance practices in the area of creating organization cultures that encourage a
culture of research and innovation in the workforce. Through a deep understanding
of the competencies required for an innovative workforce, through scientific
workforce planning, through creating the teams and the coaching/mentoring
mechanisms, and by building research focused industry-academia linkages we can
enhance the ability of people to innovate and achieve the desired results.



In summary, we need to be able to Attract, Develop, Motivate, Organize and Retain
the right Talent for Structured Innovation, and more importantly understand the
causal relations and equations for creating and nurturing such abilities and
capability.



The widely acclaimed People Capability Maturity Model® (People CMM®) framework
developed at Carnegie Mellon University, USA is the first global initiative to bring
about an institutionalized, standards-based approach to addressing the 'people' part
of the Innovation Ecosystem.



Need for People CMM®



The industry needs to adopt a standards-based approach and create an inter-linked
system of processes and best practices that transform the organization's capability
for managing its workforce.



While we accept that most of today's service and knowledge businesses are talent
driven and that people are our biggest assets, historically, many organizations have
focused more on proactively improving their delivery processes and their investments
in technology. In addition, their approach workforce management too often
incorporates practices from a labor relations orientation that do not represent best
practice in managing knowledge workers.



In fact, the current global concern of talent shortfalls and high attrition rates in
IT/ITES-BPO Industry are only a tip of the iceberg.



At the business level, there are imperatives like improving productivity, moving-up
the value chain, enhancing competitiveness and getting closer to the customers.

At the organization level, issues like managing a multi-cultural and multi-geography
workforce, managing rapid growth and creating "cool" work cultures continue to take
a large mind-share of business leaders and HR professionals.



So, it's not good enough to win the "talent wars". It's also not enough to try
solutions (like Business Process Reengineering, Employee Stock Options, Assessment
Centers and 360-degree appraisals) in a piece-meal manner.



Instead, the need of the hour is to take a holistic view of the organization's
business, culture, technology and talent needs. And adapt solutions based on an
integrated and proactive approach towards developing & engaging talent, growing the
business, delighting the customers, and increasing the probability of Innovation.
In essence we must develop an integrated system of workforce practices that provides
staged foundations on which more sophisticated practices can be implemented over
time.



People CMM® has successfully guided work force improvement programs in many global
organizations such as Boeing, Wipro, ZTE, Alcatel, TCS, Satyam, Honeywell, Novo
Nordisk, Nokia, L&T, HCL BPO, Covansys, CSC, NIIT, Accenture, LG CNS, Hughes
Software Systems, IBM Global, Siemens and many more.



For Further Information please contact:

Supriya Kulkarni
QAI India Ltd.
Phone:+91-80-25506386
Email: supriyak@qaiindia.com


Neeti Rastogi
QAI India Ltd.
Phone:+91-11-26219792
Email: neetir@qaiindia.com


Sonali P.S
Mutual PR
Phone:+91-9844489854
Email: sonali@mutualpr.com

Prasanth
Mutual PR
Phone:+91-09986732599
Email:pchandran@mutualpr.com

About Dr. Bill Curtis
Dr. Bill Curtis is the architect and co-author of the People CMM® developed at
Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Bill is also the co-author of the Capability
Maturity Model® (CMM®) and the recently developed Business Process Maturity Model
(BPMM). BPMM provides a foundation for contemporary management approaches as it
goes via the analysis of business processes to the roots of an organization. He is
a former Director of the Software Process Program at the Software Engineering
Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Bill has co-authored four books and
has published over 150 papers.



About ISB, Hyderabad:



The Indian School of Business, ISB (http://www.isb.edu), is a world-class
research-oriented independent management institution that grooms future leaders for
India and the world. The ISB is a collaborative effort of eminent business leaders,
entrepreneurs, and academics from around the world, and has formal affiliations with
the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, the Wharton School, and
the London Business School.



The ISB\'s faculty body is a combination of visiting and permanent resident faculty
members. Visiting faculty members come from the partner schools and other top
schools around the world. Permanent faculty members have previously studied and been
on the faculty at the top schools around the world, and publish their research in
top journals.



About QAI India Ltd. (QAI):


QAI (www.qaiasia.com) is a leading global consulting organization addressing
knowledge intensive industry sectors such as the IT/BPO space and delivers
multi-faceted interventions to enhance the innovation and competitiveness of
organizations.



QAI is Asia's largest and amongst the world's leading firms in the enterprise wide
deployment of process initiatives that contribute to 'Operational and Business
Excellence'.



Set up in 1994 as the Asia-Pac hub, QAI's mission is to facilitate enhanced
competitiveness in Software, BPO and other knowledge intensive organizations through
multi-faceted interventions in the areas of Process Improvement, be it business,
engineering, people management, or IT, through our services in Consulting, Training,
People, Process and Operational Assessments, Benchmarking, Certification,
Conferences, Resource provisioning & Quality Outsourcing and e-Learning.



This unique blend of services focusing on the triad of People, Process and
Technology, enables clients using one service to benefit from QAI's experience,
knowledge base, network, and learning in other services.



QAI's regional bases across the globe-in the USA, Singapore, China, Malaysia, London
and India-help innovatively distribute and manage engagements across multiple
locations.



Over 300 organizations (including the Fortune 500, governmental organizations and
nodal agencies) worldwide trust QAI as their consulting partner. QAI has conducted
over 150 assessments and appraisals, provided training to over 1000 organizations,
certified over 9000 software and BPO professionals, trained over 75,000 Software &
BPO professionals in over 25 countries across the world. The QAI Consulting Team
aggregates over 800 man-years of experience.







Web Site = http://

Contact Details = Sonali P.S
Mutual PR
Phone:+91-9844489854
Email: sonali@mutualpr.com

Prasanth
Mutual PR
Phone:+91-09986732599
Email:pchandran@mutualpr.com