EXECOM headquarters, Novi Sad, Serbia – Working together and successfully delivering software projects, two European companies, EXECOM and Chess, have added greater value to their partnership. By presenting the company, customers’ expectations and software building process to the whole EXECOM team, Chess has shown respectably wide mindset. Outsourcing indeed requires full commitment of parties involved.
“This is a great example of process improvement between business partners” said Petra Eussen (PE), Chess Business Line Manager. While organizing and participating in workshops, she has also answered some questions.
Q: Did Chess have any experience regarding outsourcing before?
PE: Yes, we have worked with two companies besides EXECOM last year. With the first one we did an outsourcing of some work but the cooperation wasn’t so good. Another experience that was very valuable is with the other company to which we completely outsourced a project on fixed price basis. But those projects are over and for the future we’d like to continue working with EXECOM. We have a very good relation with people from Serbia and they match much better with our Chess teams.
Q: What was a break-through for cooperation between EXECOM and Chess? What project do you consider most deserving for that?
PE: The leasing project, definitely, done for a big international bank. Before that it was just “let’s see what they can do”, but for this project, the situation was completely different. It was very important that this project would be a success for Chess. EXECOM proved to be a reliable partner, and we realized the good sides of cooperation and gave it the importance it must have.
Q: How would you evaluate working with EXECOM?
PE: EXECOM has a lot of young, enthusiastic people, highly skilled and with good technical background. When working together we get to share the skills and knowledge. People put effort to their work on both sides and the communication is easy. I’d say that teams match really well since we communicate on daily basis. The best things that we acknowledged were that EXECOM is very flexible and focused on the customer and that people react immediately. EXECOM helps us find the solutions and solve problems. It is a good market approach.
Q: How important is communication in your daily work?
PE: It is very important, especially when you’re working with customers with high expectations. But there have to be good communication channels between team members if you want to have work done properly. Also, there’s more efficiency, and it’s not good if you find out some things in the end.
Q: What do you think are the most common obstacles outsourcing partners tumble over?
PE: Certainly wrong expectations, doing things without asking how they should be done and lack of responsibility. As long as parties involved understand each other, different culture is not the matter. It’s important to get to know people on personal level, and practice visits to partner’s site to overcome the possible problems.
After this successful visit both sides have gained a lot on widening self perspectives. And in the end, it’s easy to seize lessons learned: communicate, be open-minded, and forget about prejudices.
Contact:
Aleksandra Popara,
Communications Manager
E: apopara@execom.eu
P: +381 21 4770500
Copyright 2007 © Execom. All rights reserved.
