1. <Operation Scorecard>
Track: <Mercko Meter>
Presented by: Saravanan Veeraiyan (51348368)
Merck PMO
Balaji Prasad Nandagopal
saravanan-v@hcl.com

2. The MERCK-HCL Engagement started functioning from 2005. It grew rapidly with new projects
coming in and new associates joining the team. Today the engagement has 1500+ associates under various
projects with dedicated support teams for finance, HR and a Program Management Office (PMO).
With an engagement of such great magnitude and the activities involved, keeping a tab on the
revenues coming through existing and new projects, Profit Margins, Profitability Ratios on a regular basis and
other information related to finances has become tedious and cumbersome. This was proving to be a
bottleneck during review meetings and a mismatch was observed in the data that was received from various
teams during reviews.
In order to avoid such gaps in numbers, it was felt that there was a necessity to have an
automated tool that would track the project wise numbers on a monthly basis and generate a trend based on
the numbers and also predict the trend for the coming months based on the current figures. Based on this, the
Mercko Meter was developed by the Merck PMO.
Good Practice - Overview

3. Incorporated is a brief video presentation about Merckometer;
by Balajiprasad Nandagopal, Integrated Service Delivery (ISD) Head,
Merck Engagement, HCL Technologies
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Merckometer

4. Mercko Meter - Description
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1. This Mercko Meter Tool helps to analyze the vital metrics that are responsible for
driving the margins for a particular project.
2. The user can pick up the metrics from the available set of metrics that decide the
fluctuations in the profit margins.
3. These “Key Metrics” can be selected and the trend can be analyzed at the LOB, Division,
Account Manager and Project level.
4. The Tool also consists of Projections prepared at Project, division and at LOB level on a
monthly and Quarterly basis.
5. The numbers are reviewed on a monthly basis and based on the performance; the
monthly projections are reset so that they are in sync with the projections set for the
year.

5. Problem Faced
 The Delivery leadership had to depend on multiple sources for information and the information so
received was in an unstructured format as each division used their own format to share the data.
 Also, as the data so received was from multiple sources, there was discrepancy all across which
created gaps in Operational efficiency. Such gaps hampered effective decision making by the
Delivery and Account management teams.
 There was need for an ‘Integrated Performance Management Review Tool’ (Merckometer as its
called now across the engagement) that helps analyze vital metrics responsible to drive profit
margins, help the user choose metrics and analyze the reasons causing a ‘dip’ in his profit
margins and plan for the ensuing period based on the analysis.
 The tool should also consist of projections at a Project, Division and at a LOB level on a monthly
and Quarterly basis to facilitate the Delivery leadership identify ‘Pain areas’ and take corrective
measures to arrest at different levels

6. Agenda
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1. Summary of LOB Wise Revenue & Project Margin (QoQ & MoM) Trends
2. Review Action Tracker
3. LOB Wise PM% Correlation Key Metrics
4. ARC (Asking Rate Calculator) – Project Margin (Financial Year wise)
5. Project Margin Projections (Financial Year wise)
6. HCL - Line of Business Key Metric Trends
7. HCL - Merck Division Wise Key Metric Trends
8. HCL - Account Manager Wise Key Metric Trends
9. HCL - Merck Project Manager Wise Key Metric Trends
10. HCL - Delivery Unit Wise Project Margin Stack Ranking
11. HCL - Account Manager Wise Project Margin Stack Ranking
12. HCL - Project Manager Wise Project Margin Stack Ranking

7. Summary of Revenue & Project Margin
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Objectives Benefits
To get an insight into the Project Margin
Trends for all Merck Line of Business HC,
ETS, AXON, EAS, ERS & EBI in
Single window on QoQ and MoM basis.
Analysis help senior management
identify the Low Margins and Revenues
in the Line of business and take
corrective actions.

8. Review Action Tracker
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Objectives Benefits
To track the action items pending against
respective Managers and help close the same
within the stipulated timelines
Helps the Delivery Leadership to track
the action items against individual
Managers and help close the same
within the stipulated timelines

9. LOB Wise PM% Correlation Key Metrics
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Objectives Benefits
To observe the impact of the defined set of
Secondary Metrics on the Primary Metric
To analyze the impact of the defined set of
Secondary Metrics on the primary
Metric which is the Profit Margin at both
LOB and Division levels to help the
leadership take corrective actions if
required.

10. ARC (Asking Rate Calculator) – PM (Financial Year wise)
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Objectives Benefits
Gives a broader picture on the Revenue and
Profit Margin Targets to be achieved at
the LOB level on a monthly basis
In case of a slippage in the PM% for a
particular month, the percentage
deviation of that month gets adjusted
in the consecutive months such that
the final PM% to achieved remains the
same

11. Project Margin Projections (Financial Year wise)
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Objectives Benefits
To understand the Levers defined in the tool
that help achieve the percentage
deviation if any, that eventually helps in
reaching the defined PM%
To achieve the percentage deviation
slippage that was carried forward to
consecutive months with the help of the
defined Levers. This shall ultimately
lead to the achievement of the overall
PM%

12. HCL - Line of Business Key Metric Trends
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Objectives Benefits
Gives a broad idea about the trends of
various Key Metrics at the LOB level
Gives an insight into the trends of various
Key Parameters namely Project Margin,
Revenue, Realization, Cost per
Employee, Resource cost % & Unbilled
%, TP Margin & Utilization for both
offshore and Onsite at a LOB level

13. HCL - Merck Division Wise Key Metric Trends
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Objectives Benefits
Gives an insight into the trends of various
Key Parameters namely Project
Margin and Revenue, Avg Bill Rate,
Avg Resource Cost, FTE Utilization &
Hours Utilization at a Division level
Gives a broad idea about the trends of
various Key Metrics at the Division level
within the Engagement

14. HCL – AM’s Wise Key Metric Trends
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Objectives Benefits
Gives a broad idea about the trends of
various Key Metrics at the Account
Manager level within the Engagement
Gives an insight into the trends of various
Key Parameters namely Project Margin
and Revenue, Avg Bill Rate, Avg
Resource Cost, FTE Utilization & Hours
Utilization at a at an Account Manager
level

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Objectives Benefits
Gives a broad idea about the trends of
various Key Metrics both at the Project
Manager level within the Engagement
and at the LOB level
Gives an insight into the trends of various
Key Parameters namely Project Margin
and Revenue, Avg Bill Rate, Avg
Resource Cost, FTE Utilization & Hours
Utilization at a at a Project Manager
level and at the LOB level
HCL – LOB & PM’s Wise Key Metric Trends

16. DU Wise Project Margin Stack Ranking
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Objectives Benefits
To Rank all the projects within the
Engagement in a chronological order
based on each project’s performance
Such a ranking will help the Delivery
leadership in identifying projects
performing below expected levels and
take corrective measures at the project
level

17. AM Wise Project Margin Stack Ranking
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Objectives Benefits
To rank projects in a chronological order
under each Account Manager
This ranking helps in identifying individual
underperforming projects at an Account
Manager level and helps both Delivery
and Account Management teams to take
steps to improve the project profitability

18. PM Wise Project Margin Stack Ranking
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Objectives Benefits
To rank projects in a chronological order at a
Project Manager level
Such ranking helps in identifying individual
underperforming projects under each
Project Manager which eventually helps
the Delivery Leadership chalk out
improvement plans with the respective
Project Managers

19. Key benefits
 The dependency on multiple sources for information can be avoided and this will reduce the scope for errors and help
Delivery take decisions based on the extracted ‘precise’ information from the integrated tool.
 The lucid style and built of the tool makes it easy for the end user across Delivery and Sales to use it effectively and
efficiently without much difficulty.
 The ‘Merckometer’ brings together the flexibility and convenience to a common place thus helping the Delivery
Leadership in reducing the effort hours considerably
 The tool enables the Delivery team do a ‘Comparative analysis’ of all the projects within the engagement with the help
of all or select parameters from those available to analyze their performance and arrive at conclusions necessary to
draw future strategies
 Enable Delivery to do a ‘What If’ analysis at various levels to come up with solutions at a project, LoB, Division and
Engagement levels taking into consideration various business assumptions and scenarios.
 The tool is particularly helpful in obtaining information on the best performing projects and those that require
attention thus prompting the delivery to carry out a detailed analysis for such projects and take corrective measures
 A through ‘Root Cause Analysis’ can be carried out to understand the dip in revenue and PM% and thus initiate
measures to reduce the same
 The Sales and Delivery teams can identify groups/units whose projects are running efficiently on all operational
parameters
 The ability to forecast revenue margins for ensuing period based on existing revenue numbers is another advantage
for the end user as it eliminates the dependency on multiple sources for data and simultaneously reduces effort hours
required for analysis of the information gathered thus improving process optimization as part of Review rhythm
 As the tool maintains a data of ‘Profit margins’ at a Project level, it becomes easy to detect which project is ‘Negative’
and this will help the Delivery Leadership to review the same with the concerned Project Manager

20. Learning / Improvements
•The maiden version of the Merckometer required information to be fed across multiple sheets which consumed
considerable effort and time.
•Though exhaustive this exercise had to be carried out as the tool was being developed and implemented for the
first time in the engagement to ensure the information fed was precise and error free.
•The Merckometer v 2.0 released after 6 months did away with the entry in multiple sheets as the information
gathered under the tool was automated. This automation helped in the reduction of both effort and man hours as
the end user had to feed the data in one page.
•Other features such as navigation within pages and tabs was also improved during automation of the tool to
improve the ease of use

21. Appreciations
 Saravanan: What you have done here has NEVER been done before. This is what I call having “Escape
Velocity”. Whoever missed this, needs to see the next version which will really help us PROACTIVELY take
decisions.
Abhishek Shankar, AVP, Healthcare, Client Partner (Merck)

22. Applicability to Other Projects
 Merck engagement is counted among the top accounts at HCL Technologies. The ‘Integrated Delivery
Structure (ISD) of the engagement which utilize all service lines namely ETS, EAS, AXON, ERS, EBI, IMTS
and BServ which itself explains the complexity of the engagement.
 Also, the number of projects and the resources working under them which is about 1500+ globally is
another clear example of the engagement’s complexity.
 For such a complex engagement, a tool like Merckometer helps greatly in giving precise information
to the leadership in Delivery and Sales across various parameters like Revenue & Budget, Project
Margins, Forecast, Resource cost and billing to help them in their Strategic and Tactical Decision
Making.
 Taking a cue from this, the tool was successfully adopted and implemented as organization level
Financial analysis tool in HCL LIVE by IDAX Team.
 A clear example for the same is the replication of the tool in BFSI domain in the form of ‘Operations
Performance Scorecard’ (OPSC) at L1 & L2 level.
 This tool was modified in 3 weeks to suit the domain and was implemented last quarter.
 Similar to Merckometer, the Operations Performance Scorecard enables the delivery leadership at
BFSI domain to review the health status of various projects across sub-verticals, accounts, LoBs etc to
take corrective measures and also build strategies based on the forecasts available

23. Q & A

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