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UNCW BLA 361 - Adapting To a Project Based Planet IP Frontline

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Adapting To a Project-Based Planet: Old School in Trouble Saturday, September 01, 2007by: IPFrontline Hoboken, NJ (August 2007) — Our spherical world has been declared flat once again. And if your company has any age on it at all, you've likely found that your "old way" of doing business fits about as well as the suityou wore 30 pounds ago. Not only have many operations scattered to the four corners of the globe, the attitudes of the workforce have undergone a similar shift. People no longer expect to follow a predictable, hierarchical career path. They now expect to take part in numerous quick-forming, quick-dissolving teams that implement a series of short-term projects that, together, make up their long-term career. In short, everything has changed. And if you're trying to force yesterday's rigid business practices to match up to today's dynamic, project-based world, Rudolf Melik says you're doomed to failure. After all, talent is thebiggest differentiator between businesses these days, and how you manage it will determine your destiny. "Our established ways of getting work done, of accounting for this work, of monitoring compliance, and of analyzing work in progress for intelligence that will help us do future work faster, better, cheaper, and smarter are through," says Melik, author of The Rise of the Project Workforce: Managing People and Projects in a Flat World (Wiley, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-470-12430-7, $34.95). "They are no longer enough. Today's companies will have to learn how to function in a short-term, project-based business world. Unfortunately for many companies this skill set is not yet their strong suit." That's where Melik's new book comes into play. The Rise of the Project Workforce helps organizations realize the tools, technology, and software that is required to operate in a flat world. The book explains how project management, workforce management and workflow concepts, tools and technologies combined with accounting, payroll, HR, and CRM (customer relationship management) applications result in a business critical enterprise system that improves productivity, reduces compliance and overhead costs, and yields a substantial revenue increase. Companies face numerous challenges in their quest to adapt their business practices to the brave new flat world. Melik addresses seven of the most prevalent: · Workers have a whole new set of expectations. The generations that will make up the flattened world's workforce grew up and are growing up in an era where technology rules, where information is just a click away and in which they can easily do multiple things at once. They have shorter attention spans and, frankly, they don't want to be stuck behind a desk all day bogged down in spreadsheets and emails. "They'vealso seen the 'long-term' jobs of their parents outsourced or downsized, and this has changed their attitudes about work," notes Melik. "Today's young workers do not view their careers as a couple of long-term stints with different companies or in different positions but as a series of short-term projects that will keep them interested and allow them to develop their skills over time. They're the first generation in the new business world's Project Workforce and any company that can't understand their priorities and work parameters will be left behind." · Current business systems on their own don't match up with the operations needed in a flattened world. Modern versions of business automation tools such as ERP, CRM, and project managementsoftware are simply not designed to plan, schedule, manage, audit, and optimize work that gets done in a flat world. "These systems want to impose a certain rigidity within business processes and fail to address the dynamic interplay and constantly shifting relationships between projects and people, which occurs naturally in the flat world and characterizes today's business," says Melik. "Companies end up trying to force fit these rigid solutions to their project workforce needs. That is why so many ERP, project management and workforce management systems are so heavily customized and why so many revert." · Rapidly accelerating globalization has changed all the rules. At the start of this shift, organizations moved simple tasks like assembly and manufacturing to developing countries where this work could be completed more economically. In globalization's current wave, organizations are outsourcing knowledge workas well. At first, only large multi-national corporations outsourced operations—but that is quickly changing. "In the current wave, all organizations—even those with just a few employees—are outsourcing andconducting business globally," says Melik. "The Internet, fast networks, and a globally connected workforce are the driving forces behind this trend. And while globalization offers many opportunities for those who do itright, it takes only one mistake for a company to end up in a huge mess. The safety, ethical, and strategic challenges imposed by going global will act as huge obstacles for any company without the proper tools in place to ensure operations are being constantly checked and balanced." · Companies must learn to operate as fragmented enterprises. The conventional company has its entire workforce under one roof. It is easy to reach out to people who work on projects and external parties are mainly suppliers with discrete deliverables that do not collaborate with the company's workers on a frequent or constant basis. Today's work is defined by atomized segments that are delivered by specialized workers both inside and outside the company. The fragmented enterprise of today assigns work to internal oroutsourced teams based on costs, available talent, the nature of work, and customer expectations. It is muchharder to communicate, collaborate and coordinate with a highly dispersed workforce that operates in multiple geographies and time zones, and yet companies have no choice but to do so to tap into the global talent pool they need. · The government is watching with an eagle eye. As organizations have become more fragmented, they also have become subject to greater regulatory scrutiny. Today's businesses must achieve and maintain compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, which directly impact project execution and workforce management. In order to meet new regulatory standards, companies need more thorough and expansive systems for assigning, tracking and managing accountability for


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UNCW BLA 361 - Adapting To a Project Based Planet IP Frontline

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