Mexican sombreros and Russian vodka
Posted on February 24, 2009
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This morning one of my new colleagues surprised me: she just arrived from Singapore in order to visit our Headquarters, get used to the local processes and get to know the people here. Until here, nothing out of the blue. The interesting part arrived when she mentioned that she was quite disappointed by the fact that her health insurance had not yet been arranged by our firm, and that the company policy that tries to promote the use of web tools and e-meetings, versus the traditional face-to-face appointments, was going to be a complete disaster and very counterproductive.
As suggested in a post published some days ago, virtual appointments are an increasing trend around here (i.e. Europe). This reduces costs and increases -somehow- flexibility. Despite of this, other areas in the world, and in particular Asia, are still reluctant to adopt this kind of tools, where their belief of “getting a first impression” is still strong enough to avoid phone and video conferences as a mean to introduce two possible business partners.
Empowering ghost sales
Posted on February 21, 2009
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Probably the first idea that comes to mind when thinking about outsourcing some of your processes abroad is related to customer support. Who hasn’t experienced calling to your customer/provider X and getting attended by a person with that interesting British accent that Indian gentlemen usually have?
And, well, I guess that if I would ask you what’s, from your point of view, the only reason to hire a team abroad to do what your guys where doing at home you would rapidly think “cutting costs”. Am I right?
The proposal would be now mixing the best of both packages: Indian customer service and virtual teams. Of course, this option offers much more than the reason pointed above. One of the latest trends is not just outsourcing your call centers or support teams but also your -whole!- sales team.
Harry Potter and the Wisdom of Crowds
Posted on February 16, 2009
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Imagine arriving at your office, connecting your computer and finding out that part of your daily work has already been solved by two chaps in Mexico, one in Australia, and a distinguished German mister that you have never met before but happened to find your job interesting. What would be your reaction? Would you enjoy the feeling of just being responsible of improving what’s been done and delegate other tasks to some unknown mob or would you rather keep the tasks for yourself and your traditional-tailor-made team, for those who know how the processes and methods in your company work?
Well, if you chose the first situation as your preferred one, you can call yourself a crowdsourcing follower (even when the crowd, in this case, was just a bunch of people that can be counted with a hand), a phenomena that is kicking hard in many fields of science, entertainment and, with increasing power, business.
Three sweet ways to help you optimize your business relationships
Posted on February 15, 2009
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It is quite clear that the current economic environment is not the easiest one for just about every company. Almost every day one can read in the news about layoffs, or even big multinationals shutting down.
Established is also the fact that, in order to improve margins and optimize processes, in the nowadays existing picture a company cannot remain isolated from the rest of the world. Kofi Annan already said eight years ago that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity.
If you are thinking about taking the big step and becoming an international company, there are some basic steps that are sometimes obviated and should never be forgotten:
