Fly me to the moon: July 2007

That's my route in the EIGHT days business trip:

溫州 (Day 1) --> leaving 溫州 to 玉環 (Day 2) ---> leaving 玉環 to 溫州 (Day 3) ---> Leaving 溫州 to SH (Day 4) --> SH (Day 5 - Day 8)

Temp. of these countries:
溫州 - around 37 °C
玉環 - around 38 °C - 40 °C
SH - around 37°C

Be frank, this is not funny to site visit the Factories under such high temp. The environment and air-condition of those factories are bad, workers have to work a dull and repeating job in a poor ventilation and dirty environment.

The objective on this business trip is to understand more about the vendors' requirements, what difficulties they are facing now in the product development for my clients. During this trip, I learnt alot since Trevor shared with me lot of job experiences on being a consultant or BA. He showed me a new angle on dealing with people, vendor and life. He is a good mentor in my eyes and feel glad that I have chances to work with him.

Unfortunately, I caught the Diarrhea in 玉環 since this place doesn't have the water supply in their local area. They mainly rely on 溫州 to supply them the water, therefore, the water quality is not as clean and good as Hong Kong. Remember, I love to drink the mineral and distilled water in HK ... so ......... I am sensitive to dirty water. I forgot this point and drunk the boiled tap water at hotel. Therefore, I went to toilet over 8 times a night and got the fever in Day 3. Luckily, one of my clients took the pills fr. doctor curing Diarrhea. Even though I felt a bit better after taking the pills and rest @ hotel, I almost fell down while waiting the bus heading back to 溫州. We were standing for over 10 mins waiting for the god damn bus under 38°C , I was dehyrated at this moment, that's why I suddenly out of focus and could see nothing for around 1 min .... it did scare my clients and Trevor. I was lucky as the Bus just arrived when I was BLIND .... After 'loading' me on the Bus and drinking the water... I could see this world again !

Heading to SH, I found that my wonderful business trip is just begun :P
Fay's uncle owns a factory in SH and would like to adopt the ERP system for their further business growth. I am interested in this project so I suggested Fay to visit his uncle's factory together. The main purpose is to explore any business opportunities to work on another BPR project in China (sure .. another purpose is for visiting SH, a place i haven't been there before, maybe that's the main purpose indeed).

I can retrieve what I have learnt fr. Trevor and practice it in SH. It is good as I got Fay as a translator. After studying their problems and understand the operation workflow, we deemed that most of the factories do have the problems on defining a clean role and responsibilities of staff, ambiguous tasks description, unclear operating flow. They think that adopting a ERP solution can help them to increase operation efficiency and standardize their workflow, but it is not. System is just a tool for them to monitor the communication and operation flow effectively, building a channel to store and retrieve the business information quickly. That's not a tool for u to solve the management problem... maybe will create more if launch a solution without a clear management direction and definition on staff's role and responsibility. I cannot help them to work BPR as I am not well-experienced in factory management, but I can check with HKPC and provide them a general guideline on TO-DO list in their existing moment. I hope I could help Fay's uncle as they are nice to me.

After this business trip, I realized that :
1. I still have much rooms to improve in lobbying skill, I am very young in this aspect
2. the difficult part on developing a software project is not the technical part itself nor picking a right solution ( I am afraid geek wl yell if he read this), the most important part is the change management. How to change the user mindset and their acceptance on using the software, that is one of the key factors to affect the successful development of a software project.
3. I am happy to have 'you' to stay with me during the time I suffering the pain. 'You' could teach me how to do and provide a mental support during the time I was weak. I know that 'You' are very important now :P
4. Even u caught something weird in the hotel room alone, like the TV would switch on automatically at 5am .. then kept on switch on and off itself, u didn't think too much, u could still sleep very well. That is, nothing is impossible depends on how you interpret the situation :P (just becoz’ i was so tired .. I didn't give a damn on it)

OH ......... what a long article ....... let's take a look of some pictures in my flickr album. enjoy it :D