it’s november, officially i am now part of this global team called center of expertise (coe) that will consolidate and facilitate technology expertise in my company translating to lower operating cost and higher revenue.
to give you a crash course in the outsourcing business that the global economy is so much into, i will attempt to explain to you in not so much words. put your businessman hat on. in a world of technology surplus and free enterprise, a business tends to do what it knows best, its business. so a big manufacturing firm will continue to manufacture tubes of toothpaste and bars of soap and what not, as it tries all its might to keep-up with the technology that enables its business. most of the time there’s a big lag, afterall they made billions making soap, not elegant technology solutions. in comes the outsourcing companies, with a promise to deliver all their i.t. needs in a fraction of what they are spending on. to make it even more attractive, they put in s.l.a.s (service level agreement) that fines these outsourcing vendors once they fail their promise of good service. if you’re going to ask how come it would cost less to deliver the same service and still make a profit out of it, outsourcing companies has a clever little model.
the outsourcing model has 2 business groups, the consulting group that generates business (clients) and promises to make their lives much easier and the delivery centers who breaks their backs to make it happen. these consulting groups are what we call the profit center, their bottomline is profit; profit, profit, profit. they might even throw in a bone, or their first born just to get the deal as they are measured in how much revenue they generate for the business. the muscles to this engine are the delivery centers, the one that get things done. they operate in a cost center model. they don’t care about the profit, all they want is to past all costs to someone, a project, an account, to anyone and they’re happy. as long as its people is doing something for someone, it’s all good. idle hands, or people, are not the devil’s playground, they’re unwanted. a delivery center is measured in many ways like utilization rate, productivity rate and all those hoopla, but the bottomline is the rate card; how much will it cost for a business (profit center guys) to engage folks from the delivery center. so a consulting office will get businesses for a price, then get people from the delivery centers to do it, do a complex math (bid price – delivery cost) and he gets his margin (profit). although it’s not as easy as that, but you get the picture. delivery centers are low cost like the philippines, india and china that allows these deals to turn out a profit.
starting monday, i’ll be part of this big mechanism to centralize technology expertise for the global office. it’s like a gear that churns the engine of global netizenship to full throttle. this is the/my culminating step to become the ultimate corporate drone; a global master that feeds on people’s happiness, life essences and hope. what little i have left of it anyway.
listening to:
Stardust… The Great American Songbook, Volume III – Rod Stewart: Baby, It’s Cold Outside
i’ll even let you choose, first dibs. submit your answers before saturday night (8:00pm GMT+8). i’ll acknowledge the person who’ll guess it first, correctly. clue, it’s generated by a barcode engine on the backend. no cheating please!
