Global Service Desk : Collocation x In House

I have been working on the deployment of a Global Service Desk Project with a major Global Provider during the past few months for several Latin American countries. And I take the opportunity to share with the colleagues and readers in general my thoughts reflecting this and also past global projects experiences.


Despite all the business needs and specificities, I have notest that sometimes we more loose than gain in terms of service quality and, in the long run, the acceptance of the services by end users and business managers in general tends to decrease if we don't take appropriate reconnection actions.


If some global projects could take into consideration work under the concept of "Collocation", meaning with that having specialists professionals directly allocated inside the key areas of the business (example: Industrial IT, Sales, Finance, Lab), we could have more value added into each business area, by allowing the assigned professionals to have direct, day by day and really a "breathing inside" experience along with the business, watching and developing opportunities of quality and business processes improvements.


When we have projects with a global standard and just small chances of flexibility and regional adjustments, just outsourcing services already done regionally, mainly in Latin America, we can have a huge amount of issues in the beggining, that can be corrected in a medium to long term relationship improvement, but the cost for it would be much more than dollars, pesos or reais. 


It would be the patience, acceptance and the overall image of the IT and IS Departments throughout the businesses in all the countries.


And this is really key to have a smooth management of services and change management processes, including communication and acceptance, hence sometimes cultural barriers and costumes are very hard to undertake upon a single and unified process, without any changes.


I believe that an unified exercise of finding what is best for the local or regional businesses, plus a calibration between in house and collocation resources, could be very benefitial and crutial to the quality, acceptance and comprehenssion of what is to manage IT and IS ares these days on the Industry. 


And that could refine and really sponsor the image and sinchronicity of IT Departments throughout the businesses.


Have a Nice Week!!!




Rodrigo Montagner

Sam Walton's 10 Rules

Sam Walton's 10 Rules

Excerpts from Running a Successful Company: Ten Rules that Worked for Me
Sam Walton, in Made in America

I didn't expect to find "get taxpayers to pay for your health insurance" on this list, and I didn't. Still, it's a pretty good list.
This isn’t the first time that I’ve been asked to to come up with a list of rules for success, but it is the first I’ve sat down and done it. I’m glad I did, because it’s been a revealing exercise for me.

I do seem to have a couple of dozen things that I’ve singled out at one time or another as the “key” to the whole thing. One thing I don’t even have on my list is “work hard”. If you don’t know that already, you probably won’t be going far enough to need my list anyway. Another thing I didn’t include on my list is the idea of building a team. It almost goes without saying that you absolutely must create a team of people who work together and give real meaning to the overused word “teamwork”. To me, that’s more the goal of the whole thing, rather than some way to get there. 

1. COMMIT to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else. If you love your work, you’ll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody will catch the passion from you – like a fever.
2. SHARE your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will perform beyond your wildest expectations. Encourage your associates to hold a stake in the company. Behave as a servant leader in a partnership.
3. MOTIVATE your partners. Money and ownership alone are not enough. Constantly think of new and more interesting ways to motivate and challenge your partners. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score. If things get stale, cross-pollinate – have managers switch jobs with one another to stay challenged.
4. COMMUNICATE everything you can with your partners. The more they know, the more they’ll understand. The more they understand, the more they’ll care. Once they care, there’s no stopping them. Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitors.
5. APPRECIATE everything your associates do for the business. All of us like to be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them. We like to hear it often, especially when we have done something we’re really proud of. Nothing can substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free – and worth a fortune.
6. CELEBRATE your successes. Find some humor in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Show enthusiasm – always.
7. LISTEN to everyone in your company, and figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines – the ones who actually talk to the customer – are the only ones who really know what’s going on out there. You’d better find out what they know. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble up, you must listen to what your associates are trying to tell you.
8. EXCEED your customers’ expectations. If you do, they’ll come back over and over. Give them what they want – and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don’t make excuses – apologize. Stand behind everything you do. The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign: “Satisfaction Guaranteed”.
9. CONTROL your expenses better than your competition. You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient.
10. SWIM upstream. Go the other way. Ignore conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find a niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.

Those are some pretty ordinary rules, some would say even simplistic. The hard part, the real challenge, is to constantly figure out ways to execute them. You can’t just keep doing what works one time, because everything around you is always changing. To succeed, you have to stay out in front of that change.

from: http://customerservicereader.typepad.com/customer_service_reader/2006/01/sam_waltons_10_.html

www.blueskyentrepeneurship.blogspot.com

Projetos Globais e Organizações Locais - Gerenciamento de Mudanças

Prezados Leitores,

Tenho passado por vários projetos globais de integração entre sistemas, entre organizações, entre pessoas e entre culturas, durante os últimos dez anos de minha carreira, dez anos estes passados em Tecnologia da Informação.

E estas "horas de vôo" geraram em mim um olhar ao mesmo tempo contemplativo e de certa forma sereno de como as pessoas e organizações adaptam-se (ou não) às novas realidades de sistemas, de processos, maneiras de trabalhar e amplitude de paisagem de atuação, saindo de gerenciamentos e aplicações locais para compartilhamento global de serviços e de infraestrutura geral.

Uma outra e importante observação pessoal sobre o tema é que, não importa o tamanho ou o direcionamento gerencial de cada organização, mudanças são inevitáveis, mudanças estas pelas quais o mundo dos negócios obriga as empresas a passarem, não obstante por processos dolorosos ou traumáticos de mudança cultural, processual, comportamental e mental, e que muitas vezes ocasionam até mudanças até em seu corpo gerencial.

A natureza de cada negócio é que vai muitas vezes determinar o impacto de cada mudança, ou quão diferente ou específico é cada cliente, ou cada processo de negócio seja adaptado e personalizado por cliente, que deve ser adequado a uma esfera mais global, porém sem perder as características de exclusividade que muitos clientes, para não dizer todos, preferem e valoram como essencial à manutenção das boas relações comerciais.

A Comunicação e seus desdobramentos dentro do Gerenciamento de Mudanças é o um dos principais canais através do qual as mudanças tornam-se menos traumáticas, e o entendimento, aceitação e adaptação a cada novidade podem ser melhor aceitos, desde o presidente da empresa até o usuário de chão de fábrica.

Muitas vezes medidas como uma simples visita aos departamentos, acrescida de comunicados escritos e impressos, provaram ser muito eficazes a curto e médio prazos, e os demais meios de comunicação e interação, tais como banners, e-mails (teasers, electronic banners, Comunicados, etc.), assim como reuniões presenciais para informação e sessões de perguntas e respostas, provaram também sua efetividade no aumento da aceitação por parte dos usuários finais e corpo gerencial das empresas.

Porém, mais importante do que qualquer preparação de "ambiência" local, faz-se extremamente necessário que a alta hierarquia local da empresa tenha um bom gerenciamento de comunicação e afinamento de expectativas junto à Matriz (muitas vezes internacional e externa), deixando todos no mesmo nível de informações, possibilidades e diretivas estratégicas da corporação, tornando os "headquarters" e os "regionais" afinados e bem entrosados quanto ao patrocínio dos projetos globais junto ao corpo de operações e gerenciamento local, evitando assim inúmeros conflitos e "barulhos" de projeto que podem simplesmente ruir com toda a estratégia central da empresa para implementações ou rollouts, e fazer de um projeto específico uma imensa fonte de frustrações para os ambos os lados (equipe global e equipe regional), e criar já de início uma atmosfera não favorável a uma nova plataforma global, a um novo Service Desk Global ou mesmo até a um novo ERP Global.

Acredito que a Comunicação e o alinhamento Estratégico sejam duas das mais importantes chaves para o bom desempenho e a boa implementação ou transição internacional de sistemas ou de serviços de Tecnologia da Informação.

Obrigado e uma boa semana a todos !!!

Rodrigo Montagner

DESIDERATA - Have a great Week !!

DESIDERATA


-- written by Max Ehrmann in the 1920s 

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. 
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. 
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. 
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. 
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. 
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. 
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. 
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. 
You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. 
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.  With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
 Be cheerful. Strive to be happy

The job you have into the job you want

Very Nice Article and worth to a reading
http://hbr.org/2010/06/managing-yourself-turn-the-job-you-have-into-the-job-you-want/ar/1

NY Memory in a cold afternoon

Dear Friends and readers,

About 15 months ago me and my wife made a trip to the USA with the purpose of attending a very dear friend's weeding, and we took some days more to spend them in New York City. We rented a nice room nearby Riverside Drive, up in the Upper East Manhattan, and took a couple of days to walk by, know the surroundings and really feel the ambiance.

We had a very beautifull moment after crossing the Central Park and entering into the 5th Avenue. Right in front of the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art Staircases, we have testimonied a great male black vocal group playing live on the sidewalk, just scored by an acoustic bass without any amps.

The chilling wind was harsh and temperatures were something aroung -5º Celsius, with the chill of -15º.

The powerfull vocals, the beautifull architecture, the so american sounds from these singers and the great piece of art that is the 5th Avenue and surroundings made feel very nice and really part of the world.

I felt in that moment as if I was part of something, that life was passing by and it seemed that I have found another side of myself in New York City.

I have bought a copy of the cd (I am the brown jacket guy on the left talking to one of the singers), and whenever I hear it at home on weekends I remember being part of the great world and feel gratefull for this great and live experience that I now share with you.

Hope you like it!!

Cheers

Rodrigo

Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen! (Original + English Subtitles)

This is one of the most beutifull videos I've seen that shows and gives us a glance about a sincere and very clear opinion about things that really matter in life.
And that somehow leads us to reflexive moments and experiences I've had travelling abroad, knowing people and feeling the cultural differences, like been in New York and Southern California, or like being in Northeast and South of Brazil, be in Argentina and Brazil, you name it...
This video makes me feel reflexive and good very often.
Hope you like it.