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Presentation for BE2CampEast 29 April 2010
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The importance of Personal Relationships in Effective Collaboration
John KeleherIT Manager, Crittall Windows Ltd
Agenda
• Collaboration• Case Studies• North America v UK Construction Market• Company 1• Company 2• Personal Relationships
col·lab·o·rate (kə-lāb'ə-rāt')
working with enemy — the betrayal of others by working with an enemy, especially an occupying force
working together — the act of working together with one or more people in order to achieve something
Collaboration
Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
- Henry Ford
Case Studies
• Not the whole story• Names withheld to protect the innocent• Interesting comparison of the fate of 2
successful companies looking to expand into new markets
UK Construction Market
Source: thepeoplebrand.com
North American Construction Market
Source: thepeoplebrand.com
Company 1
• 80 years’ successful trading• Focussed on UK residential market• No 2 in UK• Entered UK Commercial Market
Company 2
• 160 years’ successful trading• Focussed on UK Commercial Market• No 1 in UK• Re-entered North American Market
Outcome
Company 1• February 2010 entered
administration
Company 2• April 2010 won Queen’s
Award for Enterprise in International Markets
Why are people important?
Source: PIECC Project
Source: PIECC Project
Collaborative IT Project
Collaborative IT Project
• 4 developers based in– Brisbane– Fort Lauderdale– Braintree– Aberdeen or anywhere in the world
• Web based Collaborative Tools• Most productive period?– 1 week all 4 spent together working face to face
Personal Relationships
• 2002 fire in comms room– All servers condemned– No formal disaster recovery agreement– Back up and running in 4 days• Email same day• CAD next day• Commercial systems 4 days
• Different responses from different vendors
Responses
• Radan (CAD)– Engineer finished his day’s appointment and arrived Braintree 9 pm.
Worked till midnight then again in morning.• Centric (Email)
– Responded immediately (Sunday), visited site & then setup virtual Exchange Server
• Data General (Main Unix Server)– Engineer next morning, spent 3 days locating and setting up a loan
server• HP
– Rang us late next day to say our support contract didn’t cover fires, and we would have to place a purchase order before they would send an engineer.
Reasons for Great Responses
• Radan – 15 year relationship, – the engineer had worked on original installation
• Centric– New business but –
• MBO from our web developers• 5 year relationship with technical team
• Data General – 20 year relationship– the engineer had worked on original installation
Conclusion
• Companies don’t collaborate people collaborate
• Technology is a great enabler, but you have to want to collaborate for it to be successful
• Long term partnerships enable the development of trust and foster great working relationships
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