Rebooting zaatu.com, google docs and PM Tools

19Apr09

Last week i’ve met Joel to discuss about rebooting the development of zaatu.com. Zaatu was meant to address the growing BPO industry in the Philippines, by providing a web service for job listing. Now it will be pursued to be a talent management platform targeted for the small and medium enterprises.

Google Docs has been my free online storage of choice, until recently  i noticed that i’ve been using this as a collaborative tool with my colleagues. It’s free, it fits to sme’s requirement since buying a full featured office suite does not make sense if they are not able to use all of it’s bells and whistles.

I’ve created a new page ‘PM Tools‘ , to review available Project Management Tools in the market.  Managing the PM Processes and Tools for 4yrs now, i’d like to compare or at least identify the gaps from our in-house application. Read on.

Filed under: Personal Technology, Project Management, Technology Management, Technopreneurship   |  1 Comment
Tags: google docs, project management tools, talent management, zaatu.com

Jumpstart in Amazon

19Apr09

Dennis Posadas just notified us that his new book is out . . .

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http://www.amazon.com/Jump-Start-Technopreneurship-Dennis-Posadas/dp/9810681313/

Dear Friends,

My new book, JUMP START: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009), is now at Amazon.com at the link above.

I do hope you check it out.

DENNIS

Dennis Posadas
Author/Technology Columnist
http://www.businessweek.com/bios/Dennis_ Posadas.htm

Checkout my new business fable from Pearson
entitled JUMP START, coming this Summer 2009
to Asian bookstores everywhere:
http://jumpstartfable.blogspot.com/

Filed under: Strategic Planning, Technology Commercialization, Technopreneurship   |  1 Comment
Tags: dennis posadas, jumpstart

Now Playing on TM: Project Management as a Basic Business Skill

12Apr09

Filed under: Project Management   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: business skill, mcbride consulting group, Project Management

Avaya taking advantage over Nortel’s demise

31Mar09

After filing for bankruptcy, Nortel is in the midst of selling off its business units. One familiar player is bidding for it’s wireless unit. Interestingly, Rudy – a contemporary way back in my BPI life was once connected with Nortel and Cisco and now is with Avaya. I’m actually wooing him over to join our organization but he’s just a little less than a year working with Avaya and it does not look good in your CV when your bouncing around. Anyway, two other colleagues are connected with Nortel, by being the client of which, of their voice application products. But with the recent developments of the once darling of the Northen Americas, both of their organization are starting to replace their install base with Avaya. And that’s where Rudy comes in. Apart from the forecasted BPO flow in the country he’s also doing sales call to organizations wanting to replace Nortel products.

Normally troubled companies, if not shutting down, are being bought by healthier competitor. Although their technologies may not be compatible, the survivors simply takes the market share and integrate or/and retire the previous’ product line.

And so whether Avaya will buy Nortel’s voice applications or not, their clients are vulnerable into folding the leading supplier/s to avoid any technical problems along the way.

Are you using Nortel?

Filed under: Competitive Strategy, Technology Acquisition, Technology Management   |  1 Comment
Tags: avaya, nortel, voice applications

Venture Challenge: Developing Intrapreneurship in the Corporation

29Mar09

Aside from internal research and development, collaboration with partners and mergers another way of sustaining business through offering new product innovation is by encouraging employees to participate in a corporate wide challenge of coming up an idea that will benefit their employers. In essence corporations are developing intrapreneurs, entrepreneurs within the enterprise.

Let me share my own experience in the verge of being an intrapreneur. My previous employer, has started their own version of intrapreneurship through its Venture Challenge Program that started on the year 2002. Being in the company for 5 years that time I’m much immersed with the fast paced technological development the company has undergone. Although the Philippines office is a mere sale and marketing office, the company does not fall short in information dissemination among it’s stakeholders including their employees. The Venture Challenge or VC aims to encourage worldwide employees to pitch their ideas which of course align to the vision of the company. The company will own every submission of ideas as a trade the winner gets to start-up their own business unit and tap the company’s to make things happen. There are 3 rounds of qualification before being recognized as winners. First participants needs to submit a proposal, a document not more than 3 pages that will describe the venture. This will be the participant’s ‘elevator pitch’ trying to convince judges that their ideas are fit with the vision of the company and of course something that is achievable within a short term, there’s no point in passing the first round if the idea is from out of this world, one of the objective of the program is to generate new product innovation that can be introduced to the market as soon as possible – to capture the market. After the first round, qualifiers are then invited to the headquarters to further develop the study and validate if the existing capabilities of the company are able to support the idea. And final the third and final round is the awarding of winners which are being congratulated by no less than the company chief executive – one way of showing that their ideas are worth noticing by the no. 1 business leader in Europe; I think there’s nothing more appreciating than that. The day after is the rewarding part where the winners are then pulled out from their respective units and start their ‘own company’ as they start to develop and prove that their ideas are worth investing. The company’s resources are at their disposal.

Being an entrepreneur wanabee myself I have joined the program for two straight year. I have entered a concept product, an auto-credit transportation fee for every mode of public transportation by the use of your mobile phone and the operators as the collector. The second product I entered, an electronic module for toys that will capture the activities of your children and send the experience to their parents through wireless network. I must say both products quite gain perceivable in the long term. So for the meantime my entries pass only the first round, and kept on company asset for the future or perhaps being used as I wrote this paper. Now I’m enjoying the coffee cup that I received as a token of participation. I noticed they gave us a coffee cup for us to drink coffee, not to sleep so we can think more for them : )

That was 7 years ago. Does your organization apply the same initiative?

Filed under: Technology Management   |  2 Comments
Tags: intrapreneurship, r&d

Now Playing on TM: Business Plan – by UCSB

21Mar09

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Tags: business plan, ucsb

999 Business Ideas

17Mar09

Here’s another proof that ideas are dime-a-dozen and it’s only as good when you execute it. I was following Dan Miller’s 48 Days to the Work you Love and stumbled upon this link  http://www.sixmonthmba.com/2009/02/999ideas.html by Samba Blog. The list includes existing business models’ especially #789, I meant #688 with www.meebo.com, a reliable service i’ve been using since day one.

The list is quite handy and timely where governments are encouraging the growth of small and medium enterprises. I’m open to collaborations!

Filed under: Strategic Planning, Technology Commercialization, Technopreneurship   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: 999 business ideas, samba blog

Abet’s 24/7 view

10Feb09

24 x 7 operations has been a trend since the boom of the call center industry. But in the food and beverage industry, Kowloon (siopao and siomai) has been one of the pioneers of operating round the clock.  My friend Abet (and his wife Lei) acquired a franchise about 2 years ago. With the franchise business model and some operational tweaking, the couple was able to cope with the startup challenge.

The location of the store and it’s operation timeframe was one of their challenge, without either of their presence.  Although the usual phone call normally solves any in-store issue, the couple is finding it hard to manage what they can’t see.  Lei is a natural internet surfer, after a short discussion about using the available technologies — it’s quite obvious that the solution was installing an IP web camera.

bizwatch

After more than a month in replacing their PLDT account with Globe’s bundled voice and DSL service,  I helped Abet configured their 24/7 view of their store.  We used the service of www.dyndns.org that provided the url for the web cam service. Globe’s router (aztech) needs to be configured to forward the http request to the ip based camera, an encore product which can be bought off-the-shelf.

The router comes with a dyndns client that is supposed to register the ip address to dyndns.org whenever it changes. So far the setup is reliable it’s been working for a week now. PLDT has it’s own service that they offer to SME’s. But with a little tech review it is as simple as setting up a printer to your PC.  The free dynamic DNS services offered by the likes of dyndns.org surely makes the internet a useful utility.

More information about the setup: www.blutopic.com

Filed under: Personal Technology, Technology Acquisition, Technology Management, blutopic   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: 24x7 operations, dyndns, ip camera, kowloon

TM Jobs:FULL TIME Web Designer Needed

03Feb09

FULL TIME Web Designer Needed

Requirements:

- Possesses the ability in industry-standard web designer ordinance: XHTML, CSS, Javascript, Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator
- Basic knowledge of PHP/MYSQL, Ajax is a plus but not required
- Has a strong foundation in web design basics: layout, typography, color, and interface design.
- Must be willing to work in Ortigas

Interested applicants can email their CVs

Filed under: TM Jobs, Technology Management   |  1 Comment
Tags: CSS, Flash, illustrator, javascript, photoshop, xhtml

TM Jobs: Smart Careers!

03Feb09

Career Opportunities! A post from an EGroup . . .

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Hi to all!

I would very much appreciate referrals for the following positions.

We are currently in need of the following:

SOFTWARE/APPLICATION DEVELOPERS (At least 1 yr Java programming experience)

QUALITY ANALYST (At least 1 yr working experience in a bank, IT company or Call center; With knowledge on SarbOx, SDLC, ITIL &/or CMMI)

BUSINESS PROCESS ANALYST (At least 1 yr. experience on technical documentation and process improvements)

DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR (At least 3 yrs related experience)

PLATFORM ARCHITECT (At least 4 yrs related experience)

DATABASE DEVELOPER (At least 3 yrs related experience)

FRONT-END & REPORTS DEVELOPER (At least 3 yrs related experience)

BUSINESS & TEST ANALYSTS (At least 2 yrs related experience)

SYSTEM INTEGRATOR (At least 2 yrs related experience)

 

Recruitment- In-Charge
Technical Account

Filed under: TM Jobs, Technology Management   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: analyst, careers, database, developers, Jobs, smart career, telecommunications