it management in manila: 11/12/11

Welcome to our blog!

Field trip to Vestas's IT organization in Manila.

We are four students: Jesper Larsen and Tue Lassen (Bachelors in political science) & Claus Laustsen and Rasmus Knap (Bachelors in IT) from Aalborg university, who are currently studying IT management as our Master.

As a part of our 9^th semester we are writing two scientific papers in collaboration with Vestas. Furthermore an aspect of our 9^th semester has been concerning sourcing strategies and project management. Therefore it is relevant for us to visit Vestas's IT organization in Manila. Besides Vestas we are going to visit two other offshored IT-organizations, NNIT and Excitor.

The papers are as mentioned being composed in cooperation with Vestas which offshored a part of their IT organization to Manila back in 2008. The papers concern the following:

1. How has Vestas IT-organization developed their IT-capabilities and structure over time in the efforts to become a strategic (trusted) partner to the business.

2. To describe and define the IT middle managers role in the IT organization.

The purpose of our trip is to collect data for the two papers and in general learn about and experience the practical aspects of offshoring. We are thereby gaining practical knowledge regarding the challenges IT organizations face when they offshore parts of the IT function, that we can compare to the theoretical literature we have been presented to in class.

We consider this a unique chance to explore the different processes in an offshore organization and learn how leadership and management can be performed.

The purpose of this blog is to summarize and reflect upon the experiences gained from visiting three offshored IT organizations.

Ready to go to Manila? Not quite - the economical aspect

As a student everybody knows that one is on a tight budget and consequently we needed resources to cover parts of our expenses. We therefore have petitioned different funds which have responded positively. The realization of the trip became imminent once the petitions were accept, which was a great relief for all of us.

The blog will be updated regularly and pictures will be shared as well.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

First day in Manila

We were picked up at the airport and taken to the hotel

In the lobby of our hotel - christmas is coming!

Makati City rising in the horizon

Last night Finn invited us to come and watch the national hero of the Philippines Manny "Pacman" Pacquaio defend his title as world champion in light middleweight. We joined Finn, his wife and some friends of theirs, from the danish expatriate network in Manila. We went together to a restaurant displaying the fight inside one of Manilas enormous casinos. We experienced how proud the Philippines are of Pacman who's also a member of the congress. It was great fun to experience the atmosphere in the casino where everyone was following the match, even if it meant they had to watch it in the mirrors from outside the restaurant (The match was displayed on a Pay-Per-View channel so one should by tickets at the casino to watch it).

We spent the afternoon on a trip to Intramuros (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intramuros) a historical part of Manila from the Spanish colonial period. We were taken there by one of the Danish expatriates’ driver, who showed us some of the more poor districts of Manila on the way there - It sure is a city of great contrasts. Makati City, the business district, where we stay is merely nothing but skyscrapers, but few hundreds of meters away poverty and lack of basic needs reveal itself everywhere.

On the way back to the hotel from Intramuros we had great fun experiencing the traffic in a local Taxi. The driver was overtaking the other cars on the inside until he suddenly stopped, realizing that the next car to overtake was a police car J. Furthermore we learned that traffic lights and control in general are considered more like guiding lines than actual rules and that pedestrians are not really taking into consideration in the traffic – which is not nice.

We ate dinner at the hotel and spent the evening working on our projects and resting.

We are still somewhat struck by jetlag which is more challenging to overcome, than first expected.

Tomorrow morning we will face the first day at the office and an exciting week scheduled with interviews and meetings with many different Danish and Philippine employees in the IT business.

Departure from Denmark

Finally the day of departure has come! It was time to harvest the fruits of our fundraising. We met at Tues place 11:30; a cold and windy friday november morning looking forward to feel the tropical weather on the other side of the planet, although a 19 hour long journey was ahead of us.

Tues girlfriend drove us to the Airport where we arrived ahead of schedule and was able to check in, in an almost empty airport. We decided to play some table soccer as one suddenly realized he had forgotten his purse (no names mentioned…) which gave the schedule a little twist of excitement. Despite of that we did catch the plane and landed safely in Copenhagen, where we were in a bit of a rush to get the next airplane to Doha, since we had to run from terminal 1 to 2 in 40 minutes. The flight to Doha was nice, with good service and a fine meal although some of the flight time was also spent making some work and sleeping. In Doha we recharged the computers and worked some more on our transcriptions. From Doha to Manila the boing 777-300ER (a very big airplane) smoothly carried us to Manila Airport. We tried to take a picture of the plane but the Qatar officer didn’t share the passion of photography…

In Manila we were struck by the warmth and the high humidity which instantly made us sweat. The driver from the Picasso hotel was waiting to pick us up and drove us safely through the, apparently, chaotic and anarchistic traffic. We saw the contrasts between Makati city which is the business district with impressive skyscrapers rising everywhere and the poor ghettoes where the houses is made of iron sheets.

The hotel is very nice. We got two studio rooms, which matched and maybe even exceeded our expectations, with wifi, balcony, good toilets, nice beds and a minibar. At the hotel we met our Danish contact Finn Lund Poulsen, who is general manager at Vestas, Manila, whom we, after a quick check in and a bath, went to a local place to get a beer and a brief introduction to Manila.