Last summer I was contacted by colleagues who had received an RFP for a leading Japanese company. This company specializes in creating customized technology solutions for the mainly pharmaceutical clients and this was their first foray into Japan. This was to be a global initiative on the part of this client to consolidate software so that their offices in Japan, the U.S. and the UK could all share more detailed information about their products and related testing and reporting.
I accompanied them to make the presentation as the person who would directly work with the Japanese team if we landed the project.Once we were selected to provide services to this Japanese company, we committed fully to working to meet what we knew to be a very aggressive timeline and to work with other vendors in ensuring that the project was completed both on time and on budget.
In the course of working for other clients over the years, I have never encountered a project such as this. This was to be a truly global undertaking and this Japanese company was fully willing and prepared to not only spend the money but also utilize all resources fully to accomplish their goals. I must say I was impressed and excited.
For all us who work in Japan-U.S. business, we often encounter clients especially on the Japanese end that say they are ‘international minded’ or that that a ‘project is international’ but this client truly meant it. Not only did they have the usual practice of sending Japanese staff on overseas rotations but they had instituted a program that required U.S. and UK staff also to do work rotations in Japan for various lengths of time.
In the kick-off meeting for this project, you saw Japanese, English, Irish, Germans, Koreans, Indians and Americans all working together. Our weekly status meetings were feats of brilliant engineering by our project manager. The commitment on everyone’s part to make this project a success was exemplified by our willingness to dial in at 6am, 7am, or 9pm depending on what country we were in.
Our most effective tool for this project was our communication plan that was established at the beginning of the project and agreed upon by all top manaegment, project sponsors and team members. By constant communication we were able to identify and mitigate risks that could have seriously affected our timelines.
Although as with any project, there were issues, major challenges and of course unexpected happenings, this project was a major victory. Not just in terms of a successful completion, but in terms of showing how Japanese businesses can use technology and global teams to advance their businesses.
Starting on Monday, I will write about this project as a Case Study in a three part series: Global Initiative, Global Solution.
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