Managing Change at Axis Bank

Read the case 'Managing Change at Axis Bank (A)' and the article 'Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail.' Describe the critical elements of the change management process undertaken by Shikha Sharma at Axis Bank.

Shikha Sharma, during her 4 years tenure brought changes to bank’s hierarchical culture, strengthened the core team by appointing new talent where needed, sought to build its core processes and infrastructure, and filled several gaps in the product portfolio. She was able to accomplish all these through a successful change management process. She took various measures to foster communication within the organisation. She encouraged meaningful dialogues within the organisation by creating new discussion forums. Some of the critical elements of the change management process were:

1. Building the team: She relied on the existing and in house expertise of a strong senior management team that she inherited. She wanted to make sure that she did not lose the set of people who brought Axis Bank to where it was today. Whenever there was talent gaps in critical areas, she hired new people from outside. She was happy to wait until she found the right talent. She tried to integrate the new talent into the Axis culture as quickly as possible through dinner invitations and various other informal interactions
2. Focus on data driven decisions: Sharma introduced the concept of data based decisions. Now, decisions were taken based on data as opposed to the earlier approach of taking decisions either committee based or driven by gut feel. She, along with the employees developed various metrics to track the performance of the organization as well as the employees.
3. Changes in consumer lending: Sharma was able to identify that losses in consumer lending were burning off the profits of the bank. In an effort to reduce asset concentration, allow liability growth to lead asset side development and build a strong backend, she set out to build a robust risk management framework. She hired talent in data analytics space to build a data infrastructure. She leveraged branches to sell retail assets to its existing customers. In view of this, they created separate vertical for sales, operations, credit and underwriting, collections and customer service, rather than holding geography heads responsible for these functions with central reporting
4. Enam Securities acquisition: To augment its investment banking business, Axis bank acquired the investment banking, equity distribution and corporate advisory divisions of enam securities. This was done to bridge the gap in equity capital markets and mergers and acquisitions so as to provide a holistic product offering for its large and mid-corporate customers
5. IT investments and process improvements: She focussed on improving processes and creating s robust backend through investments in IT. Axis bank moved from a structure where it managed IT for each product separately to one where it had a common mission across the entire IT infrastructure. Significant investments were also made in alternate channels such as mobile and internet banking, and ATMs, which attracted the most profitable customers.