It has been a few weeks already that I wrote my last blog. Unfortunately, no one commented on it, so apparently either little interest interest exists in my life, or 75% of the population has gone blind in the past 4 weeks being unable to detect my lack of blogs!

Though the weather has been quite easy and relaxing lately - more like an extented autumn in stead of a real winter - my work load was on the contrary. Long days and hard work have been the ingredients of the past few days.

We have launched our team members (doing the same job, just supporting other countries) in Argentina, and are currently still working on getting our other team members ready in Asia (the perceptive reader may conclude there are 3 teams in total).

In my working world, each project consists roughly of three phases: design (people designing the process), transition (a few weeks/months of testing) and operations (when operations is officially responsible for the work they do). For Europe we are about to hand over operation reponsability to the team itself (would be me), for Latin America, we're still in transition, working yes, but still no final handover to operations, and for Asia we have not gone live yet; still in training phase.

For Europe we have already, within two months, encountered problems with the client. On the operational level, the clients perceives our service different from what we do: this means, that they want us to do other things than we think we should be doing. It is pretty common though when upper management agree on something but somehow fail to commicate clearly throughout the organization. But when things are put in a contract, agreements become static, not flexible anymore. Especially on such a big, global, project, the more you put in writing, the more rigid the process becomes. Nevertheless, you have no choice then putting as much in the contract as possible, because there is too much money involved.

So, hoping this week will be more relaxing, I salute you once more. I promise, as things should be slowing down, to regularly write my blogs.

Do widzenia!

For all the steady readers of my blog, I apologize. Thaks (or due?) to my christmas holidays I have missed a few editions, but now I am back, and fully active again.

For 2008 I do have some plans. Some of them are work related, others are private. I surely hope that the project I am working in and on will finally start running. Working for an outsourcing centre means that a client outosurces certain activities to your team. Obviously there are advantages and disadvantages to this approach

We are experiencing the disadvantages:

1. The whole project is currently theoretically overengineered but very difficult to implement on the practical level. The ideas people have at top level is hard to implement on practical level: think of computer systems, how to measure whether certain goals are met, etc. etc.

2. The client's employees whose tasks have been outsourced to my team obviously are not very happy with this and look at us with suspicion: ' they take our jobs!', and ' why do we need them? - they are not doing a better job' are some of the thoughts and out-loud sayings we experience daily. This makes it hard to cooperate in a constructive way. Nevertheless, these thoughts are understandable; how would you like it if (part of) your work is bein outsourced to f.e. India?! That would rise some thoughts.

3. Due to the above described internal resistance at the client's company, little work is being outsourced in reality. Employees protect their work, 'do not have time' to work on this project, etc. etc. It will take some time to migrate all this properly.

That is why in 2008 we should work on a successfull transition! Two things I have to take in mind:

1. the wishes of the client, on the higher management level and the individual worker who is actually executing the plan

2. my own employees who are designing the process: i have to make sure they do not lose reality out of sight when designing the process.

But as said, in the new year I am completely fresh and full of energy. I will tell you next week whether I already changed my mind or not!

Last week has been a slow week for me. My project is not creating the amount of work necessary to keep my sweating behind my desk all day, so an ideal opportunity to join our recruitment team for a day in the field; watch how they visit universities or job affairs, how they interact with graduates and how they display and position the company in the market of job seekers.

This time, the place to visit was Czestochowa, the world famous pilgrimage place. Before the start of the presentation at the language school, I had little time to visit this place of worship, and I made a very quick tour, just catching a glimpse of the marvellous constructions and breath-taking ambiance. In the meantime, I lit a candle, praying for a succesfull day at the school of philologists, language experts.

Together with one recruitment officer, I was keeping the presentation about the company, what we are looking for and what we offer. Unfortunately, no one had ever heard of Accenture so we had to start from scratch. Too bad, the presentation was not completely adjusted to the wishes of the students; as neither student was aware of the company, nor had any experience in accounting, business administration of technology, we had to revert back to the very basics: what are the students looking for in a job, and does Accenture fit this picture.

Gradually we got a better and clearer picture and the feedback we received from the 58 people afterwards was very positive. Hopefully, I have contributed to this and perhaps one day soon I can greet (one of) these students again, but this time within Accenture.

Accenture is actively looking for language skilled people. Just imagine any European language possible and we ARE looking for it; Accenture Outsourcing, that branche actively looking, is expanding rapidly; downside is obviously the risk that in our search-rush, we forget to ask questions or lose control.

It's up to the company to prove that they are professional enough to handle this situation. I already have an opinion about this, but I challenge you all to come up with any criteria as how to measure this (lack of) control! How can we make sure that the organization can grow along with the explosive sales growth: how can we make sure that staffing, supporting departments, organizational structure and human capital are not suppressed or are inferior to turnover. This is not what Accenture stands for. I will tell you my opinion in a few weeks. Now I await your reaction.

I invite you to apply at Accenture (have a look at our available www.jobscareers3.accenture.com and select poland) and be critical yourself in your job interview. Make sure you get what YOU want from the company. We are waiting for you to prove we are the best. You just show up and ask us why.

 

 

 

In the aftermath of yesterday's yearly christmas party battlefield, while the fog is clearing up, I take a look back, and while counting the casualties I make up the result - did I win or lose?

Luckily I can tell you that I won decisively! Besides the excellent food and "enlighting" drinks, the biggest war-booty was the number of people I met. Accenture Warsaw employs a few hundred people; still - as I found out - harbours the characteristics of a big family. Given time, it IS possible to meet more and more people, from diverse departments, different floors and even from different buildings. Personally, I think this is an excellent feature; it offers you a second home!

Let me first explain to you what I do at Accenture. In short, one of our clients has outsourced a part of their purchasing department to Accenture. I am working in this department, serving The Netherlands (the soon to be Euro Champion 2008!), United Kingdom and Norway. I find suppliers that can deliver services and products matching my clients needs, negotiate prices, and benchmark. My team consists of 6 members, and in total we serve approximately the complete European Union. Imagine the number of languages we speak every day!

My office is on ul. Pulawska, close to the centre, where I am located on floor 6 together with the IT department. Well, I don't know if that's an honour to sit here, but let me tell you that at least I get all my computer problems fixed in no time. That is always on of the bigger problems, regardless where you work; network, IT, email. You become so dependent on these resources that the IT people become the backbone of the company. Try to develop a huge vocabulary regarding this topic, otherwise you won't be able to keep up with them. Even when talking about Gigs, routers, intranetserverthreebitplug and random cache, NEVER blink your eyes. Just nod, indicating you understand.

Here in Warsaw we are mainly working in services, outsourcing. This is an overused word, and in practice this means that our clients trust us to perform certain activities on their behalf. Certain activities (in our case, purchasing, accounting, accounts payable, administration and general ledger) are performed by Accenture, so our client can focus on their own core activity. Our benefit is that we concentrate all know-how in one place. Imagine, my department collecting all purchasing experience for our client in the complete European Union. This is true for all departments, so many opportunities exist for many people with different interests, all this with an international flavour. I will describe you one of my working days next week.

Our office also harbours on the finest consulting crew members, backoffices, and HR members. In these two months I have worked closely with some of them. Not everyone sofar. I will have to wait for the next party to get to know the other people! As soon as the pictures are available, I will put them on the blog here. Hope to hear from you next time!

It's snowing today, as the more observing people amongst you will have noticed. Working in the snow, one of the reasons for me to move to Poland in the first place. I have learnt this answer by heart because when moving to Poland because I had to explain not only to all my friends at home why I was doing this, but also my Polish colleagues and friends have recently questioned my sanity. Let me tell you why...