Practical know-how of the Global Project

Hitoshi Goto

Ukihiko Takagi

Globalization is a mandatory requirement for IT engineers because joint production in Japan and overseas, and collaborative business at the supply chain level are common practice. This series will explain project management and the difference in customs and laws that IT engineers should know when working overseas.

To be a "Global PMO"

Global PMOs (Project Management Office) are generally defined as organizations that support to drive all concurrent projects inside the company. In order to work in this organization, we need to know the know-how to work overseas.

Therefore, in this series, the know-how based on our real experience will be disclosed. Though there are many people who feel difficulties working overseas, you do not need to be afraid if you find those know-how.

In particular, this series covers the know-how that is useful in practical operations, mainly about overseas cultures and customs.

After explaining that Japanese common practice fail to work, we will introduce the important points regarding implementation of the system, the customs and laws that you should know when working overseas, and the management of overseas projects.

First of all, we will give you a rough image of the overseas project by introducing a typical overseas project.

This is an example which support management of overseas project that introduced ERP packages simultaneously in a series of businesses, such as supply-demand management, procurement, manufacturing, order management, shipping, sales, and accounting of IT related "A" company.

Bases where the system is implemented are Japan, America, Germany, Austria, China, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. The vendors responsible for implementing ERP are domestic company (in charge of business design and package implementation) and Indian company (in charge of setting up and add-on program development).

In such this project, since there are many countries in which system is implemented and since the vendors of this project are Japan and India, it is necessary to support the project by considering the circumstances of various countries.

Dealing with tax related matters (particularly duties and value-added taxes) are difficult in any countries, and it takes time to do requirement interview, setting up, and confirmation. Particularly, regarding tax filing and auditing in Germany, it took time and effort for responding to package and developing report.

In the global business, we are doing business between across countries and regions, so we must firmly implement the differences of shipment and acceptance standards in each country and region into ERP. This will also require long time for confirmation, including tests.

Only Japanese prioritizes QCD

Of course, although the system development itself as described above is difficult, scheduling of on-site members in each country and region were harder than that because they are gathered in weekly business trip from remote locations for this project.

Due to thier weekly business trip, they are busy on Saturday for cleaning and washing, and Sunday is rest. As Friday is travelling day, it is also better to avoid meeting on Friday. If the meeting is held for a long time, they will not be able to go home.

Therefore, the schedule must be planned from Monday to Thursday. In addition to this, it is better to consider that people do not work during the period of vacation holiday and Christmas holiday preparation. Many people give priority to vacation.

Nonetheless, people in all countries or regions dislike unnecessary meeting.

We can say that it is good to consider the difference of national characters.

In any case, "Japanese common practice" fail to work. Please remember this point first. After that, there are also a lot of challenges as well as fun.

Read [Part 2]>>

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