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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 9th semester we are writing two scientific papers in collaboration with Vestas. Furthermore an aspect of our 9th 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.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Karaoke – not only for singers

The picture shows the systematic construction of electric cables

We wanted to experience some local night life and asked one of our “colleagues” about where to go. We were advised to go to a bar called “Top Grill”. We were very excited to see how the bar looked like. The bar was placed on third floor, and as we entered the bar we were almost run over by eager male waiters dressed like women. It is much more common for boys in the Philippines to dress like women, than it is in Europe, but it was still a bit of a culture clash.
We realized it was a karaoke bar, being met by an ear-splittingly loud Filipino voice. As previously stated in the blog, the Filipinos love to sing. In the karaoke bar that passion really bloomed. We also learned that you do not need to be an experienced singer to sing karaoke. For the Filipinos it is not about the quality but more with a social purpose, which is very different from the way Europeans usually perceive it. After some beers (maybe more) we overcame our fear for singing to great enjoyment for the Filipinos. It got later than planned but it was a really nice evening.
A short glimpse of the traffic in Makati City

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Golfing in the city





After various attempts to get some exercise we decided to do something radical. From our workplace on the 32th floor we observed a big green net and we got curious. We soon learned that this was a golf driving range build on top of a car park. This seemed to be a funny concept which we had to experience for ourselves. After a quick walk to our hotel we changed to “sports gear” or the best we could manageJ. A short notice; none of us can write golf experience on our resumes and that became apparent after a while. After the first fifty shots, some of us became adjusted and managed to achieve a hit rate of 50%, others didn’t. Suddenly golf became life threatening as one member of the group managed to throw his club smashing into the sealing and landing right in front of another group member who saw his life passing before his eyes J. Luckily nothing happened and we agreed to stop before someone got seriously hurt. On top of that rather interesting experience we decided to get some food before exploring the local Philippine night life.
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The last interview with Finn Lund Poulsen




Today we set out to collect the last data from the Hub in Manila. Finn was kind to take his time for us once again so that we were able to cover data for both the papers. The interview concerned areas like Finn’s competencies, his role and what function he maintains in Vestas’s offshored IT department. Furthermore we got a chance to learn about his relations towards Denmark and the frequency of communication between Manila and Denmark.
After the interview we all concluded that that we now had more than enough data for further processing. Finn was able to set up a fast meeting with another Danish expatriate, who is the general manager of a systems development function, who specializes in developing software for smartphones. This meeting was due on Friday morning which will be elaborated further in the blog.
On this occasion we would specially like to thank Finn for his effort regarding the establishment of relations to different expatriates in Manila. Furthermore a “thanks” goes out to the employees in the Hub and specially the managers who toke their time to share their knowledge with us.
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