Top quality accolade for Tata Interactive Systems

July 2, 2003

Tata Interactive Systems (TIS) has taken another step to being the global first choice for buyers of custom-built e-learning materials by becoming only the sixth organisation in the world to be assessed at the highest level of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI)’s People – Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM).

TIS, which is the first e-learning developer in the world to be assessed at SEI P-CMM level 5, was assessed at level five of the, complementary, SEI CMM quality measure in 2001. It has also achieved ISO 9001 quality certification and espouses the principles and techniques of the Baldridge Model and Six Sigma.

Operating in the corporate learning; university and continuing education; schools, and government/defence sectors, TIS - which has one of the world’s largest teams for the design and development of custom-built learning solutions - has a ‘win rate’ of 70 per cent on all decided proposals. It maintains a 97 per cent on-time delivery record and has experienced productivity gains of some three per cent per quarter for each of the last 14 quarters.

TIS’s chief executive, Sanjaya Sharma, commented: “Excellence is never an accident. It is a systematic and sustained effort by a company and its people to create opportunities and then use them to their fullest.

“CMM level five has helped to make our processes robust,” he continued. “This has resulted in better productivity, low cycle times and lowest defects.

“To clients, this means products that are on time, within budget and defect-free. To us, it’s a step to fulfilling our vision of becoming the global first choice in e-learning.

“P-CMM level five means that we have mature workforce processes, which result in competent and motivated employees – and contribute to continuous workforce development. Together, P-CMM and CMM integrate continuous process improvement with workforce development and establish a culture of excellence,” Sharma said.

The vice president of TIS in the UK, Europe and Middle East, Sambit Mohapatra, added; “Increasingly, organisations are becoming more sophisticated when it comes to selecting their preferred suppliers of e-learning materials. Realising the importance of producing the right e-learning materials to meet their employees’ needs, these organisations are looking for both competence and quality in development and production skills as well as compatibility between the e-learning developer and their organisation.

“Basically, they need to know that the developer can do the job – as indicated by independent quality accreditation as well as award-winning products; has enough expertise, experience and resources to meet any and every demand they might have for e-learning materials within tight deadlines, and that the developer understands their business, its objectives and needs.”

The SEI P-CMM level five assessment was carried out by KPMG, under the impartial observation of Ronald A Radice, who is the principal partner at Software Technology Transition.