Comfort Zone or Entrepreneur

Posted on 3 May, 2011 at 11:45 PM by with Leave a Comment

Gathered a few friends on a table and started drinking and chatting in a pub lately.

After some round of drinks, discovered that everyone around the table is looking for opportunities outside. Reason being, as follows

  • Cannot work along well with boss
  • Too much of work
  • Clearing others’ mess
  • Not enough money
  • Increment not enough to sustain the lifestyle
  • Looking for better job opportunity
  • Internal politics
  • Retrenchment
  • And many more

With the escalating living standard, inflation is climbing, commodities price raises gradually. However, our monthly salary rises much much slower than the inflation rate. Thus we are always poorer than the economy. How can one survive?

A wise man says. If you want to survive, you shall not work for others. You should work for yourself.

Simple lay man terms: Be an Entrepreneur and earn money for yourself. Not working for others and trade your time with the limited money.

Are you in your comfort zone and trading your time with money.

Or are you exploring new ways to make yourself to achieve financial freedom.

For a fact, I am exploring new ways always. What about you?

Articles, Employment, Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned in Cloud Computing

Posted on 25 March, 2011 at 11:45 PM by with Leave a Comment

New technology appears every time and always be gearing towards enhancement.

Cloud Computing is the new trend in the IT industry.
What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. A cloud service has three distinct characteristics that differentiate it from traditional hosting. It is sold on demand, typically by the minute or the hour; it is elastic — a user can have as much or as little of a service as they want at any given time; and the service is fully managed by the provider (the consumer needs nothing but a personal computer and Internet access). Significant innovations in virtualization and distributed computing, as well as improved access to high-speed Internet and a weak economy, have accelerated interest in cloud computing.

Clients will subscribe to the hosting service, thus reducing the capital investment.

If the trend is moving toward this direction, in fact, it IS right now.

There will be 2 angles at looking this technology.

From Business point of view,

  • Companies need not to engage much manpower to maintain the hardware, (especially the in-house team). Fewer manpower is required. Most of the services are hosted in the service provider.
  • It is a reduced expenditure on capital assets. The company will have little hardware to take care. Pay the hosted service and the business is on.
  • Justifiable to management that it is an Operating expense rather than Capital expense. Companies will need not to or reduced stress over the depreciation cost, maintenance cost, number of license count and so forth.
  • Company IT infrastructure are simpler, just direct , sufficient access to the service provider and need not worry about the equipment hats needs to invest.

From employees perspective

  • Many people will soon be out of employment, lesser manpower is required, because of the in-house works / efforts are outsourced to service provider
  • Lesser job opportunities are available in the company. Older workers will have to upgrade themselves in order to stay relevant in the job

Lessons Learned:

When technology automates, it does ease everyone by not capturing anything manual and even a manpower reduction.

The downside of it is, there will be a trade-off for manpower. Most of the services are outsourced to service providers. Thus, the unemployment rate will rise. Older staffs will need to upgrade themselves academically or technically in order to stay relevant in the job.

Looking at the other side, there is no requirement for more headcounts to service the internal assets.

With human around, there is always some kind of negativeness, such as low productivity, efficiency, performance and so forth.

How are you going to measure a person’s productivity, efficiency or other means. There are also intangible benefits like well versed process & procedures, internal security etc.

Articles, Employment, Lessons Learned

Do not burn your bridges

Posted on 26 November, 2010 at 11:45 PM by with 26 Comments

Never reject a supplier’s offer during the project costing period. If you reject a supplier’s offer, there will be no price comparison. There is no leverage if the supplier has to play truant on the pricing and service level.

Recently, I happened to discover a project manager doings. Here it goes.

During a project negotiation with supplier, Jimmy, the Project Manager, wanted to lower the cost of every item from this supplier (Peter). In return, Peter wanted to know how much the project budget has so that he can offer a better deal.

Thus Jimmy, without knowing, shares the entire project budget file to Peter. After getting the budget file, Peter, the supplier, is now fully aware how much of approved funds the project has to spend. Peter is now aiming to find ways to ensure the project has to spend extra funds in order to make more profits. While all these negotiations are going on, another supplier (Mary) happen to come along to offer their company services.

However, Jimmy happily went to reject Mary’s offer upfront, not knowing Jimmy can use Mary’s quotation to slash Peter’s pricing. If Jimmy finds that the pricing is not right, he can also proceed to get pricing and work with Mary. In this project, Jimmy supposes to have a big saving in the project, but after sharing the budget file to Peter, the project is now having a lesser saving.

Lessons Learned

  1. Never put all eggs in one basket. Never pin all hopes in 1 party. If this party betrays your trust. You have nothing to fall back onto. More price comparison makes decision much easier and more leverage.
  2. Do not EVER share your budget file to supplier so that they can help in your cost management. Project Manager should not ever think that the supplier will try to save money for the project.

When comes to business world, personal interest is survival. A project manager has to protect the project sponsor’s money spent in all the activities.

Pause for a minute and ponder.
If you share the project budget file to supplier/ vendor, what is the supplier’s motivation?
Their objective is to make more sales and earn high profits, are they going to find ways to save money for the project? They will find all ways & means to quote every item and mark up the low cost items in order to make more margins (profits).

What will be the Project Manager creditability of cost management?

Burning Bridges

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