The pandemic has, for obvious reasons, created a panic out there. And while stories of doom and gloom abound, it is also a good time to look for silver linings and become more creative within the constraints of our new reality. Today all organizations globally have to not only embrace the distributed work model but take this a notch higher and adopt a ‘hyper-distributed’ work model. The location of work has changed but does that mean progress has to be impacted as well?
Luckily for us, we have been working in a hyper-distributed model for quite some time now. With offices in the US, UK, and India, the distributed team is a part of our delivery DNA.
For us at Codifyd, this crisis has compelled us to test our limits. We are trying to identify and invest in ways to be more innovative in our approach to build a new and better future. It is a good time to examine what we are doing right and then define what more can we do to, not only, sustain but also build our business.
This post is about one of the initiatives we have rolled out recently. We now plan to start project governance and project management from our India Center of Excellence (COE). Here’s why, we believe, it makes complete sense.
Why the move?
The value of experience
India isn’t the back office of the world any longer. We are now doing large, complex, and mission-critical technology projects. Indian professionals have been managing and successfully executing such projects for over the past two decades now. Their dexterity, proficiency, accumulated experience in this area makes them the best and the most coveted resources anywhere.
It used to be that offshore projects came to India only for the cost advantage. But would cost remain an advantage if talent failed to deliver? I firmly believe that business is now coming to India more for the talent advantage. For a business like ours that already has a presence in the country, it only makes sense to exploit the treasure trove of world-class professionals readily available here to keep improving our delivery operations.
Enhanced our global delivery model
We have global operations and a combined delivery model that we followed even in the pre-lockdown days. We are headquartered in the US and have delivery offices in UK and India working together. The development and deployment of many successful projects have already been executed by our global teams sitting across locations.
We have built up processes, communication methodologies, development, and deployment methodologies that are essential for each project. We are now looking to step up this game and are stitch together interesting collaborations across geographies and time zones to drive better business outcomes. We are looking to deliver more complex solutions. These projects are bigger, more intense, and have higher stakes. We believe that they will require elevated levels of project delivery skills. Building a project management COE will help us refine our processes and make them ready for these projects too.
Investing for a new future
Our desire to invest in the future is driving us to kick off new initiatives over the next few months. We have a rich and varied customer base among manufacturers, distributors, and B2B and B2B2C players. We want to use our strong base and skills in all areas related to product information and expand organically into adjacent spaces where we know we can add value. To drive those initiatives, we have hired some senior executives over the last few weeks.
This hiring decision might seem unusual now. But we decided to get some rock-star senior resources on-board and get them started right away. We hope to leverage their skills, experience, and capabilities to do new things and further improve what we were already doing well.
At the core -exceptional PIM/MDM capabilities
PIM and MDM projects are characterized by their complexities and multi-layered nature. Data volumes are increasing with the increase in product variants, data sources, and customer touchpoints. Data enrichment using analytics is becoming essential to PIM. Understanding the customer journey is now essential to provide contextual product information. Providing a modern, seamless omnichannel experience to the customer is now a mainstream expectation…. The pressure is extreme since the stakes are high and only becoming higher.
The nature and scope of work PIM and MDM projects need very high levels of project management and project governance expertise as they have a direct business impact. There are a plethora of important activities to take up, like:
- Identifying master data elements
- Defining corresponding metadata and using the right tools to manage the metadata
- Developing the capability to evolve data definitions to meet the needs of the time
- Developing the capability to implement MDM project in sprints to capably test new functionalities and easily add them from available product backlogs
These are just the tip of the iceberg.
Having mature frameworks, tools, and processes and having robust project governance and project management capabilities have become imperative to ensure the successful implementation of these complex solutions. Building the ability to deliver such projects successfully calls for the experience but it also calls for adaptability as customer needs and expectations evolve.
Given our confidence in our capabilities, we realized that time could not be more perfect to test our limits. We also realized that this is a great time to hire some highly skilled resources. We are looking at the new talent acquisition as an investment to help us enhance our abilities and deliver more value to our customers. The strength of our India Center of Excellence will be our ability to deliver large, complex, innovative, and impactful solutions for our customers. I believe that we will achieve that based on the experience, skills, and vision of some of the world’s top professionals in the space of project management and project governance.