Going to work this morning the city was almost abandoned. A few cars were out, even fewer motorcycles and I only saw one auto rickshaw. The yellow and black three-wheeled auto rickshaws are usually the most common vehicle in Bangalore, but not today! In all of India there’s a one-day strike, or bandh, against the high fuel prices. Bangalore is greatly impacted as the political opposition on the national level, who has ordered the bandh, is the ruling party in the state of Karnataka.

Reflection
Apart from the standstill, today also marks half time for my adventure in India! I have now spent exactly three months here and have another three to go before hitting Swedish ground again. (Maybe the Bangalorians are striking to make me stay longer, or is it to make me leave sooner?!) Therefore it’s the perfect time for reflection.

Lessons learned
1. Expect change and learn to live with it! I keep talking about change in nearly every blog post, and I probably will continue as it’s ever so present. Since my last blog post, a month ago, I have once again changed my main work task. The pan-Indian launch of mobile number portability got postponed till end of October, due to lack of readiness mainly by the state owned operators. This event left me jobless, once again, and quickly I was assigned a new task; to bring our retail stores up to speed with the original business plan. As a project manager I’ll lead a 90 day turnaround which will give me great insight into how to run and operate a retail business.

2. Go outside your comfort zone. Since coming to India I have devised Go-To-Market plans in marketing, improved our procurement process in Commercial and currently I’m heading a project in Sales, but my background is still that I’m an electrical engineer. By doing want I initially thought I couldn’t, I have widen my horizon and acquired valuable knowledge for the rest of my life. But it was only possible by not being afraid of trying.

3. Be patience. Last week Sigve Brekke, Head of the Telenor Asia operations, visited Bangalore and in a Q&A session, he shared his view on Uninor as a long term player in the Indian telecom industry. In the long term perspective patience is important. Many times over I have tried to figure out where I will end up after the trainee program, without much success. Instead I have realized that patience and making the most of the current situation will put me in the best position after the trainee program. But patience is equally important in the short term, something I have learnt here in India; may it be waiting for someone’s input or just the fact that the different work cultures makes my thinking different than my colleagues.

Next time I’ll give a update on the retail project (assuming I’m still working on that by then :-)) and hopefully I have some pictures to share from my planned vacation to Kerala, the southwest coast of India

I am currently working out of Handhelds office in Deventer (Holland), where one of our subsidiaries is located. Right now it is just above 30 degrees in my office and all I can think of is grabbing a drink and   watch the game between Holland and Brazil. I have been working here for a week to get an insight in the sales process and also get some deeper knowledge on our coming projects and products. It has been a good week, very intense and even though I did not expect it I have seen some cultural differences compared to Sweden.

During the last weeks a lot of things have happened. First we had our yearly Business Partner Conference in the beginning of June. At the Business Partner Conference all major partners that we have throughout the world are invited for a few days of seminars, product launches and mingling. This year it was held at the brand new Elite Hotel Marine Tower. After a long day of seminars a boat took us out for a four our ride in Stockholm archipelago, a very appreciated event.

This week Handheld got certified according to the ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004 standards. Me and Christian has worked as project leader on this project. Which has meant no sleep for the last few weeks, we have for real been living in our office. Even though it is quite exhausting to work like this it is very motivating when you can see the end not too far ahead.

That’s all for me right know!

/J

I just got back from The Netherlands…

Handheld Benelux is one of our subsidiaries and located in The Netherlands. The idea behind my trip to The Netherlands was to acknowledge how the Benelux colleagues are conducting business and implement the advantages to the relevant subsidiaries across the world.  Another reason of visiting the actual Benelux office was also to be part of an exceptional project with the idea of bringing that knowledge across several countries and states. I am truly amazed by the Dutch hospitality and the English skills. And of course World Cup started when I was there and the entire nation turned orange. Hup Holland:-)

Något som jag reflekterat över senaste tiden är att det pratas mycket om att ha en strategi. Det kan vara en IT-strategi, en strategi för att hitta sitt drömjobb, en webstrategi, en strategi för sommarsemestern eller en strategi för nästan vad som helst. Allt som ska göras verkar kunna innefatta en strategi. När jag nu halvvägs genom Connectas traineeprogram träffar studenter får jag ofta frågan ”Vad min strategi för att bli trainee på Connecta var?”. En form av plan hade jag helt klart. Om det var en strategi kan diskuteras. Min uppfattning var att Connecta var ett företag som skulle passa mig och att jag förmodligen kunde passa Connecta. Management och IT i kombination var det jag främst spenderade mina Uppsalaår med. Framför allt inom användbarhetsområdet och hur användare kan vara delaktiga i att driva affärsutveckling, men också hur organisationer hanterar exempelvis implementationer av nya IT-system. Steget att för en ”gnällig” närking flytta till huvudstaden kändes inte alltför stort och utifrån detta sattes planen eller strategin (om man så vill) i verket. Utifrån detta blogginlägg kan ju konstateras att det gick ganska bra med min plan att bli trainee. Under mina 1,5 år som trainee har planen ändrat riktning några gånger. Jag har fått möjlighet att testa nya saker och strategin har utvecklats. Men, kombinationen av Management och IT är fortfarande min grej och det där med att ha en plan eller strategi (om man så vill) för att nå sina mål är nog inte så tokigt trots allt oavsett om det är en IT-strategi, jobbstrategi, webstrategi eller semesterstrategi.

The Telecom industry for sure is a fast moving industry! Today Uninor launched its GSM service in Mumbai, the most populous city of India at 14 million people. In the days to come we are launching in four more areas, increasing the population footprint of Uninor by 250 million people to a total reach of 900 million Indians. Almost 10% of the world population now has the choice to call with Uninor. Truly amazing.

My task
Not only the business itself is fast moving, my tasks have quickly changed from one thing to another. In my last post I said I would describe what I’m doing at Uninor. Since then, my tasks have changed completely. I came to Uninor in Bangalore to prepare the launch of Postpaid in Karnataka, the southwest Indian state with 60 million people. Postpaid is simply mobile subscriptions were you pay post your usage on a monthly basis, in contrast to Prepaid, which is what 95% of Indians are using and it is the Uninor product as of now. However the introduction of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) became much more urgent, with a pan-India launch of MNP on July 1. Therefore three weeks ago I was assigned to be the project manager and the marketing responsible for the MNP launch in Uninor Karnataka.

Mobile Number Portability
MNP is a great service; it simply enables customers to switch from one mobile operator to another meanwhile keeping their mobile number. This service has been in available in Sweden and most of Europe for the last 5 to 10 years and in India its implementation has been underway for more than four years, finally though MNP is supposed to launch in just four weeks. The complexity of the overall project is huge since all operators, more than 15 operators pan-India, must be ready to offer MNP for all customers, a total of over 500 million, all at once. My responsibility to is to device a market strategy for Karnataka, to maximize the opportunity that MNP is to a new operator as Uninor. The strategy itself is secret as of now, but the project involves so much more. My responsibility also covers sales processes, the sales organization itself, the customer service organization as well as all our IT systems, which all need to support MNP. The best part of the project is the fact that I will be part of both laying down the strategy, doing the planning and implementing the MNP service in our organization. And now there are only four weeks till launch.

Picture time
That’s short on what I spend my time at work on, to better describe my experience of India so far; I thought I would share some pictures. These are both from work and from my weekend trips.

Market and store visit to one of the exclusive Uninor stores in Davangere, five hours north of Bangalore.

Launching of Dynamic Pricing, a prepaid product with constantly changing discount dependent on place and time.

Inauguration of the new office, we are moving there on Friday.

Sightseeing with Gabriella in Delhi; here India Gate and an auto-rickshaw. (No we are not in Paris, even though India Gate looks much like the Arc de Triomphe)

Sightseeing in Agra; Taj Mahal and the Agra fort. It’s amazing to think that Taj Mahal was built by 20,000 people for 22 years.

That’s all for now! More on India next time.

There has been a lot of focus on the actual trainee program so I figured that some of you would be interest in the practicalities around our International Management Trainee Program.

HQ

Handheld headquarter is situated in Lidköping, Sweden which is roughly 1 ½ hour drive from Gothenburg and 4 hours from Stockholm. The apartments in Lidköping are rather cheap but there are also a lot of rentals if you prefer that.  When it comes to exercising and sports we play floorball (innebandy) weekly and all the Handheld employees has got free memberships at the local gym. There are also several local sport activities that anyone can join.

Overseas

Handheld stand for all the costs as accommodation, car, flights etc so you don’t have to worry about these kinds of practicalities. We always stay at nice hotels with access to gym & sauna etc. We also host an annual ski trip to the Alps where we catch up with all our international colleagues for a nice off-piste and one or two après-skis.

Something I forgot???    If so, please post a comment!

All the best

Christian

”Jag är konsult” – men vad betyder det egentligen? Som konsult betyder det att man hjälper ett annat företag som saknar en specifik kompetens, inom exempelvis strategi, ekonomi eller IT. Yrket är inte lika lätt att förstå för en utomstående som att säga att man är lärare, till exempel. Konsultyrket är lite hemligt, vi kan inte prata öppet om vad vi faktiskt gör utan lindar in det i beskrivande ord så det blir någorlunda förståeligt. Min mamma förstår fortfarande inte riktigt vad jag gör – hjälper företag att bli bättre, effektivare, spara pengar, tjäna mer eller likande. Mer ingående än så blir det inte.

Hon har även hakat upp sig på att jag jobbar med IT, eftersom Connecta är ett IT- och managementkonsultföretag. Hon är inte den enda som fastnar vid det, då det är ett begrepp som är mer förankrat och känt än bara konsult – eller det ännu fluffigare managementkonsult. För vad är det egentligen? Visst, jag har jobbat med IT-relaterade uppdrag men jag sitter inte och kodar, snackar Java eller SQL hela dagarna. Jag har dock förståelse för IT, vilket underlättar då jag ska jobba med de förändringar kring kommunikation, arbetssätt, processer och beteenden som inträffar i och med exempelvis en systemutveckling eller IT-omorganisering. Och det faller in mer i linje med att realisera strategier, vilket är managementrelaterade frågor. Det är just där jag stävar att bli en vass konsult, där förändring sker.

Så om någon undrar vad jag jobbar med nu, så svarar jag att jag är en förändringskonsult. Och om du vill veta mer om det så kolla upp Connecta. Detta är något som jag kommer återkomma till, då det är ett karriärsval jag i denna stund utvecklar i rikting mot mer förändringsledning för att realisera strategier.

Vi hörs!

Emma

Halvvägs in i Connectas treåriga traineeprogram känner jag mig lugn. Jag fixar att vara konsult. Nu har jag varit på ett par uppdrag och det har ju löst sig varje gång, till och med blivit riktigt bra emellanåt. Jag har lärt mig hur man lägger upp och håller en övertygande presentation, hur man bygger excelmodeller och hur man ger feedback till sina kollegor på ett konstruktivt sätt. Men framför allt har jag nog börjat greppa hur saker och ting fungerar i skarpa projekt, där ute i verkligheten. Jag har även lärt mig att floskler är frekventa i konsultvärlden men det gäller bara att inte dra för stora växlar på det utan istället fokusera brett, commita sig och leverera för plocka the low hanging fruits.

Som inbiten Stockholmare passade Connecta mig perfekt, eftersom företaget huvudsakligen är baserat i Stockholm och många av våra kunder ligger här. Efter ett par år på olika håll i världen gick jag Design och produktframtagning på KTH och företagsekonomi på Stockholms universitet. Kanske inte den gängse bakgrunden för att en IT-konsult, direkt. Men under hela min uppväxt har jag varit intresserad av datorer i allmänhet och på senare tid webben i synnerhet. Det är framför allt vad webben och nya typer av kommunikation kan skapa för möjligheter som fascinerar mig. Där har vi ytterligare en anledning till varför jag och Connecta går så bra ihop: vårt relativt nystartade kompetensområde (läs: affärsområde) Enterprise Web arbetar till stor del med just sådana frågor. Just nu är jag exempelvis på ett stort retail-företag och hjälper dem med deras nya webbplats. Mer om det arbetet framöver.

Who am I?: Firstly I want to give you a brief introduction of myself. I was born and raised in Ullstorp, a small village outside Kristianstad in Skåne. In 2005 I moved to Jönköping to study economics at Jönköping International Business School (JIBS). During my studies I spent one semester at Edhec in Nice and one semester at RMIT in Melbourne. If you get the chance from your uni to go abroad, take it! When I am of work I spend most of the time training, running, cycling or sailing. I also spend a lot of time with my friends.

Fairs, seminars and ISO: During the last weeks me and Christian has been traveling around Sweden, visiting fairs and seminars. Last week we attended a seminar on International sales with ITM in Malmö, here we discussed all the dangerous pitfalls that exists in international trade.

The Office: As you probably know we are working on different internal projects. Our projects are now well on the way and in some cases we can clearly see the end. Working with this project based approach gives us a chance to learn and develop different segments of the organization at the same time. At least for me it is more exciting to work with different tasks and this is not something that is only for the trainee program, our whole organization apply the project approach when we work. How work is conducted within SMEs is very crucial due to the limited number of people and the financial limits, the resources need to be allocated as efficient as possible.

What’s next?: The coming weeks we will continue our work on ISO 9001 and 14001. We will also take part in the product development process. In our trainee program we are going to spend some time abroad, first one week in Deventer, Holland with Handheld Benelux BV., then three months in Corvallis, USA with Handheld US Inc. We are currently in the planning phase for these months abroad.

Three weeks has passed since I landed in India, I’m starting to settle in, but still every day is a new adventure. I explore new places, new cultural aspects and meet with new people every day and my conclusion has to be the same as the name of a TV show I recently watched: Incredible India.

Key learnings
I thought I could prepare myself before going to India, even though I had never been to Asia before. I think I did my best by taking lots of vaccine shots, trying to imagine what my life would be like and by packing the things I thought I would need. I was wrong. India can’t be understood unless experienced. During the three weeks I have spent here I believe I have experienced as much as I normally do in a year in Sweden. I’ll try to explain by listing my five key findings so far.

1. People are everywhere and they are very friendly, both in and out of the office. Everyone is asking how I’m doing and is genuinely interested in who I am even at the first meeting. In Sweden we can definitely learn from the Indians on this point.

2. Traffic in India = Chaos. At least this is true to a Scandinavian; fortunately I have a driver that takes me where ever I need to go. The best part of it is the traffic signs that read “Follow traffic rules”, they are ironic at best.

3. Food is a lot spicier than I thought was possible. Thanks to the continental restaurants I’m able to slowly adjust my stomach to the Indian dishes. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be able to adjust fully.

4. Differences in society in India are greater than in any country I have visited before. In our office and in the central parts of Bangalore, life is very much like any large city in the world, but in the outer parts of the city, in smaller cities and in rural areas the differences are huge. It is hard to imagine that almost half of the population survives on a couple of US dollars per day.

5. Working hours in India are very different. At Telenor Sweden I used to hear from friends that we started late at around 9 AM. When I show up at our office here at 9 AM I’m usually the first person in the office. Some time before 10 AM most people show up and the last as late as 11 AM.

All these findings are off course the result of the Indian culture, which is very different from the Scandinavian or even the European. I’m sure I will continue to learn about life in India all through my six months here.

Next time I will go more into what I’m spending my time doing at Uninor in Bangalore, it’s all about launching postpaid services in the Karnataka region, which is the state in which Bangalore is the state capital. Now I’m off and out into the traffic, you can imagine it by picturing cars and motorcycles everywhere sounding their horns constantly.