GEOMETRIC LIMITED: Organizational Study

SUBMITTED TO:
Prof. ABHOY K. OJHA
IIM BANGALORE

29
th
AUGUST 2013

ANURAAG HOTA (1311289)
M A H A V I R K U M A W A T
( 1 3 1 1 3 0 3 )
R A G H U L R
( 1 3 1 1 3 1 6 )
S H A R A N Y A S
( 1 3 1 1 3 2 9 )
V E N K A T R I Y E R
( 1 3 1 1 3 4 3 )

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT


Our first and foremost note of thanks goes to our guide, Professor Abhoy K. Ojha, OBHR, IIM-
Bangalore, who made us understand the intricacies of organizational theory. While doing the
project work, we could quite relate the theory with practice which led us to the better
understanding of the course.
We would like to acknowledge Mrs. Kadambari Tiwari, Regional Employee Engagement Head,
Geometric Limited, our organization of study, for providing great insights about the organization
structure and design helping us relates it to the theory we have studied.
We would also like to thank Mr. Mahesh Kumawat Consultant at Geometric, for choosing the
organization. This study would not have been possible had it not be the good relation he has with
the organization.
We are amused to relate our classroom understanding with the Organization. A word of gratitude
should also be accolade to our classmates for making the classroom learning a fruitful experience.
With our limited knowledge on the subject we tried our best to come up with the analysis on the
above mentioned companies. We hope that we have done work of quality that is at par with the
high standards that IIM Bangalore has set for itself.






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CONTENTS
1 Geometric Limited Overview ................................................................................................................ 3
1.1 Organization Growth and History ................................................................................................. 3
1.2 Vision and Mission ........................................................................................................................ 4
1.3 Values ............................................................................................................................................ 4
1.4 Organization Life Cycle .................................................................................................................. 5
1.5 Organization Culture ..................................................................................................................... 6
2 Organization Strategy ........................................................................................................................... 7
2.1 CORE (Committee of Representatives and Executives) ................................................................ 7
2.2 Internal Information Control System ............................................................................................ 8
2.3 Strategy and Design ...................................................................................................................... 8
3 Organization Structure .......................................................................................................................... 9
3.1 Global Footprint .......................................................................................................................... 10
3.2 Organizational Hierarchy ............................................................................................................ 12
4 Environment........................................................................................................................................ 13
4.1 Competitors ................................................................................................................................ 14
4.2 Competitive Advantage .............................................................................................................. 14
4.3 Formal Relationship .................................................................................................................... 15
5 Workplace Technology........................................................................................................................ 16
6 Issues and Recommendations ............................................................................................................ 17
6.1 Issue 1: Frequent change in the organization structure ............................................................. 17
6.2 Issue 2: Extensive levels of hierarchy .......................................................................................... 18
6.3 Issue 3: Inter-vertical conflicts .................................................................................................... 19
6.4 Issue 4: Low energy conservatism .............................................................................................. 20
7 References .......................................................................................................................................... 20





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1 GEOMETRIC LIMITED OVERVIEW
Geometric Ltd is a specialized engineering solutions provider with its headquarters in Mumbai,
India. With an employee population of over 4600 and presence across 13 delivery centers across
the world, Geometric excels in the engineering services domain with specializations in:
1. Product Engineering
2. Manufacturing Engineering
3. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
4. Outsourced Software Product Development (OSPD)
5. CAx or CAD/CAM/CAE
In this project, we are aiming to study the Bangalore operations of Geometric Ltd located in
Vrindavan Tech Village.
1.1 ORGANIZATION GROWTH AND HISTORY
Geometric has evolved as a successful company with a story of success all through its way. It
was set up as a part of the Godrej group, one of the oldest and biggest industrial conglomerates
in India in 1984. With an experience of over 60 years in the engineering services and 20 years of
experience in CAx, PDM and PLM, it stands as a leading firm in the product realization space. It
was one of the first firms to launch the first drafting software on UNIX platform in 1987. It
launched the first solid modeling CAM and FEA software in the same year. It made an IPO in
February 2000 and was listed on the National and Bombay Stock Exchanges of India.


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Fig 1.1 Geometric Ltd. Timeline
1.2 VISION AND MISSION
Following chart i.e. Fig 1.2 showcases the vision and mission of the company

Fig 1.2 Geometric Ltd. Vision and Mission Statements
1.3 VALUES
Strive to make our customers successful
Work as a team globally to create an environment which encourages innovation,
empowerment and enthusiasm
Ensure integrity in all our dealings, personal or corporate
Tagline
People building partnerships
Vision
Be a world leader in digital product realization by 2020
Mission
To be among the top 3 engineering solutions partners that help leading
companies in the world achieve their business objectives through best in
class solutions
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1.4 ORGANIZATION LIFE CYCLE

Fig 1.3 Geometric Ltd. Organizational Life Cycle
Geometric started as a part of Godrej Group in 1984 and delivered its first software in 1987.
Though it cannot be completely classified as Entrepreneurial stage because it itself was a part of
another big organization. After the first product launch in the year 1997 its focus was only that
particular product. Then in year 1994, it was incorporated as a separate company. This brought
Geometric to Collectivity Stage. The company got its own management; new products were
developed along with the companys mission and vision. Employees were committed to the
organizations mission. The structure was mostly informal, though procedures are still emerging.
After the IPO in the year 2000 Geometric entered midlife. More employees were added resulting
in increasing of the organizations size to 4600+ employees. Clear hierarchy and divisions were
created. Growth was on top priority. It acquired two companies and also formed one joint
venture with Dassault Systems. Now the companys goal is market expansion. They have already
set up 13 delivery centers across the world with a presence in 5 continents. They also have vast
line of products and services across different verticals. This brings us to the conclusion that
Geometric is in its Formalization stage.
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1.5 ORGANIZATION CULTURE

Fig 1.4 Geometric Ltd. Organization Culture

Geometric is moving towards a culture that will reinforce its strategy, structural design and will
help it to enhance overall organizational performance. MD & CEO of Geometric Ltd, Mr. Manu
M. Parpia, in his letter to shareholders talked about these cultural changes, he talks about
instituting a culture where continuous improvement (Lean) is the way of working leading, to
greater efficiency and deeper involvement of employees. He also talks about not neglecting
external sources of impetus which are need of hour for Geometric to expand its operation in new
geographies and verticals.
Hence organization is heading towards Mission Culture. In this culture a lot of emphasis is put
on clear vision of organizations purpose and on the achievement of targets of sales growths,
market share and performance etc. To achieve above targets employees also play a significant
role hence they are evaluated based on their performance and rewarded bonuses and promotions.
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2 ORGANIZATION STRATEGY
2.1 CORE (COMMITTEE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND EXECUTIVES)
CORE is the voice of employees to higher management. The committee is driven through the
PSG i.e. Productivity Service Group functions, but is an independent body. It integrates the
several disparate infrastructure, support and systems groups into a unified backbone, with a
vision to align towards business goals. Facilities, IT infrastructure, internal IT, IT security,
travel, procurement, and administration departments across several countries come under this
group. This is a forum where various issues related to operations and policies are openly
discussed.
The committee which redresses employee grievances has employee representatives, HR and
functional head. PSG was established across Geometric with single window approach regardless
of geography and vertical.
After the creation of PSG it has crossed many milestones to take its internal services backbone to
the next level of maturity to build one Geometric. Some of these milestones are-
Integration of global IT services, which led to unified IT support processes across all
locations, stronger governance, offshoring of routine IT support services, and alignment
among team members globally.
Setting up of a single intranet across all centers, giving employees one home, regardless
of their base geography. This has enabled consistent messaging across global entities.
Supporting the integration of 3cap technologies and other expansions in Europe, PSGs
IT wing has also paved the way for integrating Geometric Europe GmbH within the
global ecosystem.
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2.2 INTERNAL INFORMATION CONTROL SYSTEM

Geometric has adequate internal control systems and procedures to commensurate with its size
and nature of business. All areas of the Companys operations are covered by such internal
control systems including sale of software, purchase of fixed assets and equipment, other
purchases, fixed assets accounting, personnel expenditure related processes etc.
An independent firm of Chartered Accountants are the Internal Auditors of the Company and the
Audit Committee accept their reports and the recommendations, where feasible, have been
implemented.
The Company has implemented SAP - a world class ERP system to serve as the information
backbone and to further strengthen internal controls in the Company.
2.3 STRATEGY AND DESIGN
Geometric has adopted differentiation strategy taking competitive advantage of the broad scope
for its offerings of unique products and services. To implement its new strategy, Geometric has
witnessed the below notable shifts in the markets centered on product realization:
Restructuring of sales organization into verticals; This verticalization will help Geometric
to be more focused on its existing customer businesses and understand the customer
issues
Separate sales organization, whose focus will be on adding new accounts
Providing more comprehensive and leaner solutions that combine Consulting,
Technology, Engineering IT (PLM), and Product & Manufacturing Engineering
Harmonization of processes across locations to ensure that the same process is followed
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Support the implementation of information backbone by identifying and adopting some
of the industrys best practices for a professional services organization.
Improvement in speed of decision making. Delivery Vertical Heads and their Sales
Vertical counterparts (Power of Two) will now own their vertical P&L and making
decisions.
3 ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE
Geometric Limited is headquartered in Mumbai, India. Having started off as a unit in Godrej and
Boyce, its initial activity was in the Indian subcontinent. Over the years, the company has
expanded and has made its presence felt globally. Currently Geometric Limited has offices in 13
geographic locations.
The company has been following a vertical approach to organization design. Over the past 6
years, Geometric Limited has been through 5 organizational changes in order to align it with its
goals. The latest reorganization done by the organization was to change from a Business Unit
infrastructure to a more matrix form of organization structure. The driver for this organizational
change was to align the company with the long term vision.
The 2012-2013 year was the year of successful change management at Geometric.
Organization structure change enabled Geometric to integrate our engineering services and
software services team, and deliver higher value to our customers through integrated offerings.
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Fig 3.1 Geometric Ltd. - Matrix Organization Structure
3.1 GLOBAL FOOTPRINT


Fig 3.2 Geometric Ltd. Global Location Distribution
Geometric Limited has a truly global footprint with Delivery and Sales Locations in over 19
cities in the world. The geographic distribution is shown in Fig 3.2.
The company divides its operations into 5 categories based on geography. These are:
APAC Asia Pacific
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India
Europe
Americas
Rest of the World
Moreover, we have made significant progress in adopting Lean methodology in our services
delivery organization (Global Operations). Lean methodology has not only helped eliminate
waste, but also change the mindset of our employees towards continuous improvement, which in
turn is helping Geometric strengthen their relationship with their customers.
To improve speed of decision making especially related to our customer response, our delivery
verticals are being increasingly empowered. Delivery Vertical Heads along with their Sales
Vertical counterparts (Power of Two) will now own their vertical P&L (Fig 3.3). They will be
jointly taking most business decisions, and we believe that this will not only improve speed but
also accelerate growth as well. The Horizontal (Practices) teams are equally focused on growth
and are working very closely with our vertical teams. Given Geometrics growth plans,
horizontals are also involved in competency development across global delivery centers.
The focus with the new structure will be to create a framework to build One Geometric.
This will mainly involve:
Harmonization of the global business processes, and
Re-implementation of the ERP backbone
This is critical for building a scalable organization as it would help:
Eliminate mistakes that occur due to changes in key business processes across
geographies
Give the management more control and visibility of operational performance; and
Make it easier to compare performance of different business verticals.
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Fig 3.3 Geometric Ltd. Concept of Power of 2 per vertical
3.2 ORGANIZATIONAL HIERARCHY


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Fig 3.4 Geometric Ltd. Hierarchy of Authority
Geometric Limited follows a vertical structural framework while at the same time encouraging
horizontal interactions to promote growth.
The levels of hierarchy are broadly as given below:
L15 : Chief Executive Officer
L14 : Chief Financial Officer
L12 : Global Operations Head
L10 : Vertical Managers
L8 - L9 : Program Manager, Horizontal Managers
L7 : Middle Level Managers, Senior Managers handling multiple products
L6A - L6B : Senior Engineers
L3 - L4 : Campus Fresher, Entry Level Engineers, Junior Design Engineers
4 ENVIRONMENT
The environmental conditions of complexity and change create a greater need to gather
information and to respond based on that information. Organizations to be effective must cope
with and manage uncertainty. Geometric faces stiff competition from its competitors and with
the current economic condition it has to be proactive and constantly evolving to be in the race.
Because of high competition, engineering services sector is highly unstable and uncertain. Hence
Geometric falls in the high uncertainty category of the environmental uncertainty framework.
The framework is shown below and the category in which Geometric falls is highlighted in
brown.
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Fig 4.1 Environmental Impact on the organization
4.1 COMPETITORS
Engineering service sector has many players and so it is a tightrope walk to satisfy the customers
and be the market leader. Major competitors for Geometric in PLM service is Tata Consultancy
Services and in engineering service are Quest and InfoTech. These competitors post a threat with
regard to adapting to the changing environments and it has been in Geometrics mission to stay
ahead of competition and have a competitive advantage. In the lines of staying ahead of
competition and advancing its market share, Geometric Limited is aligning itself to the long term
goal that it seeks to achieve by 2020.
4.2 COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
The competitive edge Geometric has over its competitors is given below. These are the factors
they can use for their advantage.
i. Experienced Player
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Geometric Ltd has over 60 years of experience in Engineering Services and 20 years of
experience in PLM and CAX solution development and implementation services.
ii. Technology
Solution powered by strong IP based tools and technologies across, manufacturing and
visualization space. Also they have strong partnerships with leading PLM ISVs, who work
closely with them on product development and services.
iii. Global Reach
Geometric Ltd has the global delivery infrastructure with near-shore centers in USA and Europe
and off-shore capabilities in India, Eastern Europe and China.
iv. Recognition
Geometric is assessed at SEI CMMI 1.1 Level 5 for its software services. Geometric is also ISO
9001:2008 and ISO 27001:2005 certified for its engineering operations.


4.3 FORMAL RELATIONSHIP
The guiding philosophy of Geometric has been People building partnerships. In an
organization if resources are scarce, organizations seek to reduce vulnerability by developing
relationship with other organizations. The relationships can be through acquisition, joint ventures
and partnerships. Geometric has built enduring relationship with major firms and is into strategic
alliances with following companies.
Dassault Systems
PTC
Siemens PLM Software (Formerly UGS)
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Anark Corporation
Tech Soft 3D
Also Geometric has the following industry association which helps in controlling the elements in
the environment.
ProSTEP iViP
NASSCOM
Geometric is keen on creating value to customers and shareholders through organic and
inorganic growth. Acquisition has been a vital strategy for Geometric to tap newer markets and
to get new customers. They have acquired the following companies and increased their
knowledge database.
3cap technologies GmbH
Teksoft Inc.
Modern Engineering
5 WORKPLACE TECHNOLOGY
Global markets are increasingly competent where process productivity and knowledge
management solutions are of utmost significance. The technology solutions business unit of the
company provides out-of-the-box (OOTB) software products and technologies as point solutions.
They include feature recognition manufacturing automation, thickness analysis tools, nesting for
material optimization, multiCAD viewing and design for manufacturability (DFM) tools.
The products and technologies deal with a wide gamut of issues in the processes. They are:
CAMWorks and Feature recognition technology for driving machining automation.
eDrawings and Glovius are technologies aimed at better collaboration of designers and
suppliers to perform reviews over designs and for extensive consumption of 3D data.
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DFMPro and Geomcaliper are products to check design for manufacturability, weight
optimization and optimal wall thickness
NestLib technology aims to make optimal layout of sheet metal parts.
3DPaintBrush, CAMWorksXpress, 3DSearchIT are the other products of Geometric Ltd.

Fig 5.1 Geometric Ltd. Products and Services Portfolio
6 ISSUES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
6.1 ISSUE 1: FREQUENT CHANGE IN THE ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE
Geometric has been continuously changing the structure almost 5 times in the past 6 years with
major changes in the senior management. From the employees perspective, they cannot be
effective or improve their performance if the structure is constantly changing; that doesnt
demarcate their span of work clearly leading to muddiness in the workspace. On the supervisory
side, they find it difficult to deal with peoples anxiety and confusion. They are uncertain about
their span of control due to the nonroutine tasks that arise with the recurring changes in structure.
RECOMMENDATION:
Fig 5.1 Geometric Limited Products and Technology
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Geometric should align its transformational process to their vision and mission and try to
stabilize their current matrix structure with multifocused grouping and not switch to another
structure in the near future. With the help of such a structure, organizational goals can be met
with both technical expertise and product innovation. Also, equal authority is given to product
managers and vertical heads by this matrix structure, which can in turn reduce chaos in the span
of control of managers. This can serve the purposes of maintaining economies of scale and
excelling in the six product lines with equal emphasis to both functional and product hierarchies.

6.2 ISSUE 2: EXTENSIVE LEVELS OF HIERARCHY
With the presence of many levels in the hierarchy right from L3 to L15, every process becomes
highly formalized. It takes a lot of time for decisions to come down from the top. Each top tier
has to be informed by the lower tiers or vice versa to be able to respond quickly with the changes
in the market, which is tedious with the vertical intricacy of the structure. The creativity and
stifle suggestions from the lower tiers dont gain importance with such a structure, leaving no
chance for the lower employees to feel the ownership in his part of the business. This ultimately
damages employee relations making them inefficient.
RECOMMENDATION:
The drawbacks of this vertical structure can be overcome by clubbing levels and by giving equal
levels for vertical and product heads. This will form a group with particular expertise and that
will have a greater say in the decisions. This can alleviate greater productivity and more
incorporated solutions across the board because employees are prompted to work together to
formulate systems and solutions that bear results and ultimately benefit the company as a whole.
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6.3 ISSUE 3: INTER-VERTICAL CONFLICTS
Allocation of projects that can be categorized under more than one vertical leads to inter-vertical
conflicts. Such disputes among automotive and aerospace industry is not uncommon. Also when
an employee has overlapping roles between two verticals, assessment of his performance is
difficult.
RECOMMENDATION:
Implementation of horizontal linkages like integrators, task forces or teams may reduce the
intensity of the conflict arising among verticals or may even fade away with time. Assessing an
employee based on his contribution to the overall performance of the company and also
rewarding a vertical manager based on the effectiveness of his reporting employees and not
based on the importance of the vertical will mitigate the chaos among verticals.
CEO
CFO
Global Ops head
Vertical Managers Program Managers
Middle Managers
Senior Engineers
Junior Level Engineers
Fig 6.1 Proposed change in hierarchy
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6.4 ISSUE 4: LOW ENERGY CONSERVATISM
Existing infrastructure and equipment in the company are not energy efficient and gets added to
the total energy costs of the company.
RECOMMENDATION:
Use of energy conserving computers and equipment, lean technologies and LEED certified
infrastructure can change the level of energy consumed. Also the recommendations given by the
Energy Audit should be implemented in the technologies and processes of the company to reduce
its energy costs.






7 REFERENCES
Mrs. Kadambari Tiwari, Regional Employee Engagement Head - Geometric Limited
Mr. Mahesh Kumawat, Consultant Geometric Limited
http://geometricglobal.com Organization Website
2013 Annual Report Geometric Limited
http://geometricglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/Geometric_annual_report_2013.pdf