Valedictory Ceremony of Executive Program in Data Analytics for HPCL Held at IIM Amritsar

Amritsar : IIM Amritsar held the valedictory session of Executive Program in Data Analytics for HPCL officials on June 28, 2021. The nine-month program that started in August 2020 covered contemporary topics like Digital Transformation, Analyzing data using R, Forecasting Techniques, Data Visualization, Decision Making, Ethics, Privacy & Data Security and many other emerging areas in the field of data sciences. IIM Amritsar had customized this program for the employees of HPCL and delivered it exclusively to them.
On this occasion, Mr. Sai Kumar Suri, ED, Retail, HPCL and Dr. Pushp Kumar Joshi, Director, HR, HPCL and Prof. Nagarajan Ramamoorthy, Director IIM Amritsar delivered valedictory messages to the participants and other audience members present during this event. Prof. Vartika Dutta, Chairperson, Executive Education and Prof. Mahima Gupta, Program Director of the Executive Program in Data Analytics (EPDA) were also present during this event.
Prof. Vartika Dutta, Chairperson, Executive Education – IIM Amritsar, delivered the welcome address for the EPDA Valedictory Ceremony for HPCL officials. Prof. Dutta accentuated the difficulties posed by the year 2020 and how it forced all to meet new realities. The capability to adapt and thrive in the face of such uncertainties was deemed essential. While highlighting the strides made by IIM Amritsar in executive education, she enumerated the various programs, including short-duration leadership programs for school principals, IOCL officials, and the 2-year Executive MBA program started this year by the institute. Prof. Dutta extended gratitude towards the Retail SBU and Capability Building teams of HPCL for their unwavering support and co-operation during the collaboration. Concluding her address, Prof. Dutta expressed profound gratitude to HPCL for this opportunity and expressed a profound interest in exploring new vistas in the time to come.
Addressing the august gathering, Prof. Mahima Gupta, EPDA Program Director – IIM Amritsar, presented the key highlights of the program. Prof. Gupta ascertained how the participants underwent a series of foundation, advanced analytics courses, and their applications. The primary objective of the program was to provide an impetus for aligning the processes towards data-driven decision-making. She emphasized the program fostered the industry-academia interaction and acknowledged the keen eye of the participants in spotting opportunities for analytics in their respective domains. Concluding her address, Prof. Gupta congratulated all participants on completing the program and urged them to create value for HPCL through various data analytics initiatives.
Merit List
During the event, IIM Amritsar also announced the names of the meritorious participants. Mr. Pradipta Banerjee – Chief Manager, Loyalty Payments and Solutions bagged the first merit position in this program. He was followed by Mr. F C Sahu – Senior Manager, Retail Engineering, while Mr. Barun Kumar –DGM, Retail Engineering bagged the third position of merit. Prof. Dutta proclaimed them to be the “Idea Champions” who would steer the ship of “Digital Transformation” in their organization.
Valedictory Messages
Mr. Sai Kumar Suri, ED, Retail, HPCL, delivered the valedictory address. Mr. Suri congratulated all the participants for sailing through it seamlessly despite the rigorous and demanding nature of the programme. He stated how HPCL as an organization has embarked on digital transformation wherein they have rich information flowing into the system. With a network of 18,000 + retail outlets and around 2000 customer transactions occurring in an outlet per day, Mr. Suri accentuated the need to use such a vast amount of data in imaginative and innovative ways. He emphasized how the relevant and insightful course content and projects have helped HPCL formulate a retail strategy to differentiate them from the competitors in the face of such a situation. Mr. Suri stated that “If you torture the data long and hard enough, then the data will confess,” and thus implementing analytics in real-time for understanding customer behavior is the way forward. Concluding his address, Mr. Suri expressed gratitude towards IIM Amritsar for conducting the program and upskilling HPCL employees.
Dr. Pushp Kumar Joshi, Director, HR, HPCL, in his address, expressed gratitude towards IIM Amritsar for curating an excellent program that satisfied all the stakeholders involved in it. He added how the program accurately met the intended objective. Dr. Joshi emphasized how the valedictory ceremony belongs entirely to the participants and serves as a place to celebrate their tremendous success. While it is natural to keep planning for what’s ahead, Dr. Joshi urged all the participants to make a small pit stop and relish their success and efforts. Concluding his address, Dr. Joshi expressed the desire to explore more areas for collaboration and curate more such programs with IIM Amritsar and acknowledged the professionalism of IIM Amritsar and their efforts in making the program a huge success.
Professor Nagarajan Ramamoorthy, Director, IIM Amritsar, started his valedictorian address by extending congratulations to all the participants on completing their 9-month journey. Strong motivation and desire to learn were deemed the two crucial factors in ensuring success. While applauding the participants’ accomplishments, Prof Ramamoorthy urged them not to feel complacent and continue excelling in all walks of their lives. Reminiscing how the program was conceptualized two years back, Prof. Ramamoorthy acknowledged the benefits both the organizations reaped out of this fruitful collaboration. Addressing the participants, he urged them to rely on a blend of data-driven insights and intuitions to make effective business decisions. Connecting the dots and making meaning out of it through cognitive learning was essential in decision making. On a concluding note, Prof. Ramamoorthy thanked the capability building and retail group of HPCL for trusting IIM Amritsar with this opportunity as well talked about starting with more programs for HPCL in the next couple of weeks.
Participants’ Experience
Recollecting the experience over 9 months, Mr. Sumant Jha, a participant in the EPDA program, shared how the program helped their cohort in foreseeing the industry’s latent needs and acquainted them with how data analytics can bring about actual transformation. He added that the batch was holistically taught multifarious facets of data, including data ethics, data privacy, and leveraging data analytics for the betterment of the organization.
Talking about the pedagogy, the participants pointed out the merits of scientific methodology, including case-based learning, in-class exercises, and projects, helped all the participants practically implement their learnings. Understanding past data, cleaning it, building models, and deriving insights based on those were some of the critical takeaways for the participants. He wrapped up his experience by expressing immense gratitude to all the faculties who guided the batch and mentored them every step of the way.
Mr. Anshul Mathur, Program Coordinator, Executive Education – IIM Amritsar, proposed the vote of thanks, and Ms. Steffy Rana acted as the compere for the ceremony. The valedictory program ended with the national anthem.