Run-rate

Chris and I came to IAA each with very broad two-page Scopes of Work --- I guess as did everyone in my team with their respective clients (AWF and TATO). Chris’ was to help improve their ICT infrastructure, and mine was to help improve their marketing and communications strategy. With 1 month to actually “make a difference”, the first thing we zeroed in on the first week was to specify and concretize our SOWs.

We did our rounds and each person we came in contact with wanted us to help or give recommendations on various things. We tried our best to accommodate each request, but they unfortunately left us with a feeling that small “victories” do not equal to actually finishing projects that are valuable and sustainable even as we return to our home countries.

Coupled with cultural differences and the “pole pole” (“slow slow, no hurry”) mentality, it almost became frustrating to a point. In fact, it took more than a couple of weeks for me to understand enough of the current situation in order to re-write my SOW, and revise timelines and deliverables.

IAA is an institute established by the government in 1990 to provide training on accounting laws and principles. It has, over the years, grown into a competitive institute offering long term courses for undergrad and post-grad studies, research and consulting services, as well as short courses and seminars. They have big ambitions and a good strategy: making use of technology as competitive advantage over similar institutions and universities.

However, being a government institution, they do not have the necessary funds to support the kind of growth they are going for. Thus, they look to the short courses to provide them with continuous and sustainable revenue. Currently, the short courses are far from making this happen.

Thus, my project can be summarized this way: leveraging on short course offerings to generate continuous and sustainable annual revenue for IAA by developing an effective business and marketing plan. This of course, includes improving their marketing & course calendar, brochures, info sheets, promotional tactics, web site content, and even their evaluation & feedback collection and analysis.

It amuses me how, when it all boils down to the specifics, how perfectly similar my project is to my real work back home. Run-rate business!

And I only have a week left to get this done. Oh dear.

p.s. sorry for the boring entry. this I posted on the IBM blog, hehe :-)