METP 4 WORK PLACEMENT REPORT

Transcription

1 METP 4 WORK PLACEMENT REPORT Pablo Fernandez - 1. Summary Individual Information Name Nationality METP ID Pablo Fernandez Spain Work Placement Information Information about the Work Placement Host Institution (in English and Chinese) Sector of Industry Translation Name and Ownership form of Work Placement Host Institution Lan-bridge 语 言 桥 Duration of Work Placement 3 month (30-Dec-2009 to 26-Mar-2010) Address of Work Placement Host Institution ShaWanLu 77, 4 Fl XinTianDi Building JinNiu District Chengdu City Sichuan Province China 中 国 四 川 省 成 都 市 金 牛 出 沙 湾 路 77 号 新 天 地 大 厦 四 层 Short description of work Help the company with best practices regarding management and sales execution Contact in Work Placement Host Institution (Name, Phone, ) Michael Zhu (President) Jane Cheng (HR Director) Jane.cheng@lan-bridge.com In case of more than one work placement, please let us know all company names, addresses and contacts.

2 2. Report Choice The first thing I would like to mention is the reason for choosing Lan-bridge. Lan-bridge s president and owner, Michael Zhu, at the moment of the interview offered a full immersion in the management team of the company, to help them bring Western management and sales methodologies to the company. There were a few reasons why I chose Lan-bridge: - Chinese Speaking Environment: Lan-bridge is a company where all employees except 1 are Chinese and therefore the opportunities practice and improve the language skills were excellent. - Chinese Company: Lan-bridge is a 100% Chinese company, targeting mostly Chinese customers and that has been managed during its 10 years of existence by Chinese with Chinese methods, from the point of view of learning what a typical Chinese company is like, I believed that this would offer me a great opportunity. - Location: I made the decision of moving out of a first tier city to be able to be more immersed in a Chinese environment, away from too many foreigners and where I could have real chances of speaking Chinese on a daily basis. - Management Commitment: One of the most important points for choosing Lan-bridge was to be able to be part of the management team from day one, analyzing how the company is being managed, their issues, their methodologies, etc. and most importantly the support of the general manager that knowing my previous experience, knew I could provide a lot of value to the management team. All these reasons steered me to come to Chengdu, and to start working for Lan-bridge from a COO style role, analyzing the inner workings of the company and preparing to establish new strategies and processes. Impact/Relation to project plan Actually, after the first few months of my stay in China, I realized that the original business plan with which I submitted for participation in METP was not suitable at this point in time in the current economic situation we are facing. Therefore I started looking for opportunities and defined a new business plan for my company and my future relationship with China. I will explain further below. The hosting company History: Lan-bridge is a company with 10 years of history, based out of Chengdu and with offices in Beijing, Kunming and Chongqing. Lan-bridge has grown steadily over the last ten years, both in employees (close to 200) and in revenue. Business: The main business of Lan-bridge is to provide language related services (Translation, interpretation, localization, etc.) to its customers. Lan-bridge has delivered over 30,000 projects to its more than 1,000 customer. These

3 customers are mainly Chinese enterprises, but Lan-bridge has also managed to attract international companies that were either establishing operations in China or that came to china for events or for ad-hoc services. Company Situation: The company, after the first ten years of success, is at a point where they have to make decisions, and they have to change their management styles and methods. The management team has successfully grown the company from a small shop to a close to 200 employee enterprise with 4 offices. They have been able to achieve this by optimizing their translation team (the main revenue generation engine), this optimization has been achieved through a strict control of employee (translator) performance, monitoring the translated words/day and by using standard and custom made software tools to elevate the quality and performance of the work. Lan-bridge has also established a project management and proofreading methodology that has allowed them to provide a service with which customers are specially satisfied. Some company facts Company Goals: The main objectives of the company to bring me on-board were: - To learn from my management experience - To improve their sales team - To prepare the organization for attracting international customers Cultural Challenges Obviously the main challenge for a foreigner to work in a Chinese company is language, I knew this was going to be an issue but I was actually looking forward to this issue, since that is one of the main reasons for participating in METP, learning the Chinese language and culture. My daily work mainly consisted on working with the management team, with special focus to sales and general management practices, in the management team there are members who can fluently speak English and others who can t speak that well. Fortunately my Chinese was enough to get the messages across and although a higher level of Chinese on my part would have made communication more effective, I quickly found that language was not going to be an issue, it was just going to make things slower at times. Office Location. Although not an issue, just a culture difference, one of the things that called my attention was the work environment, the office was cold and everybody wore their coats while they were working, this was extremely surprising to me and

4 something that I could not get used to. The solution was as easy as buying a small heater to put under my table, but it is nevertheless strange for a foreigner to work like this, although this is the way things are here. Quick solution to a surprising issue. Other than those issues, there were no significant cultural issues that I would mention other than minor things like lunch times, siesta time, etc. Being Spanish and thinking that we have a monopoly for Siesta, I quickly realized that we were rookies compared to Chinese, everybody takes a nap on their desk here after lunch, something that was extremely surprising to me and that we could probably treat as unacceptable in a western company. Friendliness. If we can mention one aspect about Sichuan people, it is their friendliness, they quickly accepted me as one more and I was quickly invited to lunch here and there which made the integration easy. Out of work, people on the street were friendly, very surprised to find a laoway who could speak Chinese and everybody was quickly willing to know more about me. Achievements: After arriving, the start was quite slow, due to the fact that the company was extremely closing projects before the Chinese New Year break, but this gave me a lot of time to get to know the company and the internal processes, which got me ready to start helping them in the desired areas. - Marketing Materials The marketing materials the company had were very Chinese oriented and not following the standards followed by western organizations according to psychological studies. I redesigned marketing collateral according to current psychological trends and prepared different brochures targeted at foreign companies for each of the different services the company offered. Lan-bridge Group Corporate Presentation January 2010 Company Corporate Presentation

5 Sample brochures - Corporate Image As was the case with marketing materials, the corporate image was not very modern, I created company presentations that would appeal to companies, especially foreign companies showing in a modern way the history, present and future of the company, along with a series of arguments that would be attractive for foreign companies, especially western. Along with the corporate image, I helped create several documents and templates which are being already being used to provide a common consistent image to customers and prospects. Quotes, information requests, proposals, deliverables, presentations, brochures, etc. Other Corporate Materials - Marketing team training After getting all the documentation ready, the marketing team was thoroughly trained on how to use the materials, how to deliver an appealing image of the company to prospects and customers and the necessary arguments to make the company attractive and increase the Lead-to-Opportunity and the Opportunity-to-Deal ratios, helping the company generate better pipeline and increasing the overall sales and marketing effectiveness. After these initial steps, we looked in depth at management methodologies and tools that would make management more efficient and would render the company

6 performance more predictable. - Project Management The company has a project management software, developed internally that fulfills the needs of the project team (the core of the company and the main revenue generation engine), but this project management software is not really linked to marketing/sales. - CRM We identified the need for a good CRM software to be acquired, or developed internally. I showed the management team demos of standard software available in the market in order to provide ideas that would lead us to the decision of enlarging the current software used by the company with the functionality required by the sales and marketing teams: o Campaign management o Customer management o Pipelining o Forecasting o Sales reporting o Etc. Sample CRM Screening, Reporting Utilities - Business Intelligence The company was not using any of the standard management methodologies, they were doing a great job at managing, growing the company and maintaining a revenue stream, but the company is at a point (size and value) where some management methodologies could help raise efficiency and anticipate issues, for this we identified some points to work on: o KPIs: A series of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are being identified and put in place in order to facilitate management. o Reporting: Sales reporting, forecasting and trending has been put in place to allow management to preview and anticipate future, both short and mid/long term. Sample Management Reporting objective

7 Lan-bridge contribution to my business plan/personal career I believe that even though Lan-bridge has not contributed at all to the original business plan, Lan-bridge has helped me change that business plan and has helped me understand China and the Chinese business culture enough to understand that business plan was not viable and to have new ideas regarding my future relationship with China. At Lan-bridge I have learned many things: - Facts about how Chinese companies are managed and the need for improving those management skills, which in turn will lead to greater efficiency. - How a 100% Chinese company works internally and which are some of their hurdles - A new and different set of business rules, values and ideas about how China and Chinese are in general, which, to my understanding, is fundamental to do successful business here. Actually I am very happy to have been part of the company for these three months and hope to be able to be part of them longer, one way or another. I see a great future for the company, and I hope I helped open the management team s eyes to new techniques and methodologies that will allow the company to give the proper steps forward. METP s language training impact I can only say that METP has changed me, a lot, the opportunity to explore and experience China has been unique, and the language training has been a fundamental part of that, without that part, nothing would have been possible, and if I could make a recommendation for the future, that would be to make the program longer, both the language phase and the internship.