As I gaze out from my office window at the ever-burgeoning skyline, it seemed only yesterday that the same view from his window was a barren landscape of stone and earth. But now there stood spanking new buildings boasting the world’s biggest names in Information Technology. Again, it seemed only yesterday that we started with a chosen set of managers with a mandate to grow. And today, after just 20 months of operations we are counted amongst global best, servicing clients around the globe on Enterprise Products & Technologies.
Much like the landscape, the growth was spectacular, but the journey had been strong, steady and measured “Brick-by-brick…Man-by-man”. This story has been repeated over and over by many companies, any many of our emerging regions globally. The growth being dictated by many compelling business factors: the availability of a technically skilled and productive labor pool, cost effectiveness of operations and government support.
For a Support engineer, the work is challenging and the complexities unusual. It requires her to provide support on a complex and vast product which run critical business operations. The customer base is global and with a product coverage spanning different industries, the business diversity is large. The nature of the work calls for high diversity in skill requirement – from deep technical knowledge, to the softer but equally complex aspects of customer management – all through a virtual medium.
Knowledge as a Service – Talent Development as a Process
The IT industry is growing at a blistering pace, and for any organization living in these best of times, what is critical to its performance is how quickly it could scale up a new employee’s knowledge levels to full operational delivery. The skill building process is a critical element in capability management, and a strong process around this would lead to rapid growth and success
People Focus, effective integration
A young employee-set in a knowledge industry calls for more in everything associated with work-life. More of work, more diversity in work, more intellectual challenges, more growth. Managing such a dynamic workforce, and working with them to deliver world-class results is a challenge. To keep focus, it is important to ensure that every employee is aligned directly to a set of tightly integrated objectives at the organizational level.
The Road Ahead
As the industry is transforming itself from selling software products, to making the service offering the main customer proposition, product support is being moved closer and closer towards the customer. It is time to shift to the next gear and orient the mindset of the organization further to mange in this fluid environment. The key advantage of a young and dynamic center needs to be leveraged to adapt itself quickly to current realities.
As these thoughts run through my mind I am suddenly shaken out of my thoughts by the ring of my cell phone. It was my daughter, gently rebuking me for keeping late in office. ‘There are times when one must lead, and there are times when one must follow’, as I press the shutdown button on my laptop. My car joins hundreds of others on their way home, the gleaming skyline slowly fading away in the rear-view mirror.
Tomorrow would bring another challenge… Tomorrow would bring another opportunity…
Rajeev Shroff
August 30, 2007 at 8:01 pm
I’m curious about the “young employee-set.” I’ve had several inquiries from SSPA members about how both customer facing processing and employee training and recognition programs must change to meet the needs of Gen-Y, who multi-task with ease, but have less patience for classroom training and require much more recognition than previous generations. How are you seeing companies change hiring, training and recognition programs to adress this…or has it yet to bubble up as a critical issue?