Finale

It's been a great experience being at APC, best experience so far. The class is great! Each one has their unique talent and the professors were funny and were like our mentors. Bonding with everyone is a learning experience for me because of their thoughts and experiences in the IT world is a totally different thing from what I am doing right now, and it inspires me to be in the same field as they all are. 

But as said by one of our professor "Just enjoy and learn from the journey" I believe that the journey is as important as my destination. So often, I was focused on the finish line that I should be able to graduate no matter what and sometimes I already forgot that I should also be enjoying. Though, sometimes enjoying is hard when you know you really can’t cope up.

I guess the best learning that I have gained that no books can offer is to know the importance of experiences versus things written from the book. Book can offer all the terminologies the scenarios. But it is always different when someone you know told you their own experience.

Like Kuya Mike, talked to their boss about their proposal and forced everyone to listen because of the frameworks he had learned from the class and had proven that it was true. No books can tell that Kuya Riki is good at encoding and that we is the administrator of ‘”boycarr” app in the appstore. Little things I have learned but great things to be treasured. I guess for now it is not a goodbye for APC, but a see you soon.

I wanted to be of great help with the class same as Kuya Gem, Roger, Rolan, Mike1 and Mike2, giving also experiences they have gained. One thing I have learned is being ready first before entering a battle. J I guess, today is not yet the right time, I have to gain more experience so I will be able to grasp all the learning taught in class. Next time, I promise to be of great contribution to everyone and be able to understand all the sharing in class. J

Life is about building experiences, that’s why for now I will build first my experiences and also be of great help to everyone and be able to share also my experiences.

The new wealth of the organization, understanding the organization, customer satisfaction and all the best practices those things I will keep. Especially the social media tools which I can really use for now at my current job.

I THANK you for all the learning and the sharing of each and every ones experience.  

Technology is Changing - Reports

Part of the course is picking the best practices used by the organization, and I was assigned to Distribution Channel’s best practices. Honestly, I thought it is an easy topic but it isn’t, it is different from the distribution channel that I’ve learned way back in college. So I first thought distribution channel is more of the value chain or process in delivering the product or service to the consumer. But this time, the topic isn’t about the value chain but more on the IT value chain, which is different more technical for me.

In research of the report I’ve learned about EDI or the Electronic Data Interchange it is an automated data interchange with other companies, these help the departments within the organization and also the end consumer track down the status of its product/document. This also gives view to the consumer about their request.

Because of the vast improvement on the technology today, it gives consumers and organizations quicker response to the consumer needs, but because of this also, consumer is becoming more demanding and for some organization it a higher threat for the switching of the consumers to the competitors. Since, most of the systems nowadays are through online it lack the face-to-face and eye contact which is one of the huge nonverbal reminders that may be meaningful for the organization, which is why I believe it would be better to combined the traditional system to the high-tech solution used nowadays.

In addition to the report I did was that today systems are being executed to machines hence, producing robots to ease the process and efficiency of the worker. Like what is now being used by Amazon in storing their products they use KIVA Systems, a machine that is built to organize and deliver the products to the worker and be able to make workers be efficient/multi-task.

That is why, with all these reports given, if these system can track your products or services, the next will be tracking down the consumer: “What will now happen to the privacy of us consumers and to the security of our information”

Customer First

Case Studies are fun! It really challenges our thinking and also reasoning skills, I guess it will be better if the subject has more of that to be able to contribute ideas with the class. I learned that there are a lot of different practices that companies make. Sometimes, these practices evolve to something better because of the challenges that the company or organization faces. But as said, there are no such thing as BEST practice, because when everybody is already doing the practice then I guess that is no longer the best but instead it becomes a standard, having the best practice depends on the organization on how they will develop/innovate the standard practice in order to make it more efficient.

The challenge on my part is that I am still part of the rank-and-file unlike some of the people in class they are already on top level which most of the time differs our reasoning. When you are already at the top level you are more of the tactical unlike the lower management you are more into the operational side of things, which is sometimes do not link with the company’s objective because I view things differently. I’ve read in a book before, “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” While discussing with the team on our case study, our opinion depends on what we are now, like the experiences, the knowledge you’ve already gained and sometimes the position you are already in affects our reasoning.

But to summarize, all of our case studies are about customers and giving them satisfaction. Customers are the bloodline of a business, without customers the organization would not exist. During my college days we are taught that it is not enough to meet what the customer wants but to always surpass their expectation. But when you are working, in a business world surpassing customer expectation is costly for the business and sometimes you need to assess first the cost of services versus the return to the business. I think it is true to that we should give total customer experience but not always, sometimes it is better to give customer the element of surprise, because the nature of a person is that they are never contented and they will only expect more from your company, rather than giving it to them from time to time. Just like a friend of mine said. You shouldn’t give flowers to girls every time you have a monthsary/anniversary because once you missed one occasion that’ll be war for the two parties. J

Measure in Business

“If you cannot measure you cannot improve, you can only make mistake once, twice is stupidity” – a line given by Sir Jerald 

Which is really striking. With that, I believe everything can be measured either qualitative or quantitative, it only depends on the criteria you are giving. For example, the happiness of a customer, that can be measured depending on what kind of happiness of his you want to measure happiness on the service or product? Happiness as an individual?  Happiness in the family? That is why you give criteria or set your objectives so you would know what to improve on and measure what matters to your company. If for example, you want to know if the customer is happy with your service, will you give him questions “is the weather nice today?”of course not, instead you will ask questions that matter to you and answers you expects like “are the sales associates hospitable/friendly?” “would you want the sales associate to be friendly?”I believe, it is just a matter of knowing what criteria to make in order to assess the qualitative aspects and I believe that sometimes it is better to combined the two in order to get a more in depth data.

I’ve read in an article that Measurement is the religion in the business world, because we all love to measure things, because it makes us feel that we are really doing something. Sometimes these measurements are what we use to show people on the top management the performance / effect of what we are doing.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2014/02/10/if-you-cant-measure-it-you-cant-manage-it-is-bs/

There’s nothing wrong in measuring, because for me it is assuring that you are able to meet your objectives and giving you idea/s on what to improve on. 

First Day at APC

BACK TO SCHOOL AGAIN?

It’s the first day of class and I liked it. On my observation, the class is a younger than I expected, before I entered the class I really thought that most of my classmates were a lot older than me. Though, when we had a get-to-know each other part, I felt a little pressured because most of my classmates were really graduates of Information Technology and all are working on the IT industry. But, I already know that the course will require me a lot of effort to grasp all the terminologies that we will be discussing.

An assignment was given to us, which is like a test of our belief. The funny part is that, some of the terms are new to me that is why I need to google it first before knowing what it really is. Sometimes I already know the word but I still googled the term to check if it is really correct. But after discussing the assignment, I learned that some ideas cannot be “googled” because sometimes terminologies are different to the reality, which is why some of our answers are wrong.

There was this question that really gave me that “AHH!” and that was the question “Should CIO report to CFO” and I analyze it literally and thought the word report was only about telling or discussing but latter knew it was about being under or being a subordinate. With that I knew that there are a lot I really need to work on, since I am a marketing graduate and not working in an IT field and that is a really big challenge for me and experiences really differs when you analyze situations.

The positive outcome is that I am learning a lot from my professor and classmates; like the nature of their work, the stuff that they do and their experiences which I really think is fun and is something new. It helps me build friends and at the same time gain learning through their experiences. The subject organizational management is not actually more on the bookish side but you will actually learn on the experiences shared by everyone, which I think is more realistic and effective than what is written in the book.