Onsite Managers at Offshoring Firms: Contributing back to the firm
A few days ago, an Infosys onsite manager, Sam, pinged me asking if I could meet with him for lunch as he was looking for some mentoring. He was using the slow time between Christmas and New Year to reflect on the ‘year that was’ and plan for the New Year’s resolution. I agreed and during lunch he described how he was confounded by the new expectations from his Engagement Manager who was expecting Sam to pick up on some of the ‘account’ related administrative activities with a clear message: Sam had to look for opportunities to ‘contribute’ to the account team if he wanted to grow in the organization.
Sam’s dilemma was clear: he was billable a full time in the client’s project where he was expected to contribute and manage the project Infosys was executing. And here was his Infosys EM expecting him to step up and take on additional responsibilities related to the account.
In case you are wondering about the typical additional responsibilities, there is no list, but the activities could include:
- Supporting the billing activities. Service firms send invoices to clients for work done during a period, depending on the nature of the project. The managers closest to the ground at the client location perhaps have the best knowledge of the project/s and hence are in the best position to validate the data feeding into invoices
- Ensuring Renewal of SoW, Work orders etc. Many contracts between clients and service firms are open ended where the scope of the work continues to emerge. This means that both parties revisit work orders, SoWs etc periodically. Again, managers on the ground have the best inputs to the process of extensions etc.
- Support in pre-sales, proposals etc. Managers on the ground, with the best context of the client’s exact requirements and needs are well positioned to provide inputs to their service firm’s team putting the proposal together.
- Knowledge management: This includes defining and publishing case studies based on learnings from a project. This works both ways since clients also expect Infosys and other service firms to draw on their prior knowledge. In the context, it is the manager’s responsibility to ensure that the client specific information is de-referenced before it enters the service firm’s ecosystem.
- External brand management. This is a vast area and could include participating in technical forums, writing whitepapers, contributing to the industry body (outside the firm’s ecosystem). An example of this would be this blog that you are reading.
- Mentoring more junior folks (in an offshoring context, this includes orienting those traveling onsite for the first time)
- Other Activities... Example could be taking on responsibility for other onsite activities, say coordinating a Christmas party for the team.
I observed that Sam’s predicament was not unique to an offshoring firm but is probably true of predicament of most consulting and service firms: how much to contribute back to the firm?
My input to Sam was simple. I described how the emerging expectations were not unique to our company alone. In my past life with another (non Offshoring) service firm, I too had been faced with this dilemma: I realized that as a representative of my firm, I had two sets of stakeholders. I was a key member of the client’s project team. However the ‘client’ was not responsible for my career development, training, learning or other professional development needs; my consulting firm was. I had only one way to grow beyond my area of responsibility: look for opportunities to contribute to my firm.
Should the expectation from Sam's manager be any different?
Comments
I quite agree with Sam's manager's requirement and your view too.
In many long-term engagements the onsite managers either get sidelined or lost in the crowd. In a way, this may act as a hindrance for managers seeking growth.
Seeing myself as a Project Manager, I would always look for more opportunities and make myself knowledgeable in many areas rather than my specific area of concentration.
I have always believed that a "Jack of All Trades" will definetely have an edge over a master when it comes to managing teams.
Posted by: Diwakar Muthu | January 2, 2008 01:02 PM
In most of the long-term onsite engagements, people tend to loose the identity of the company and pickup the customer's identity. So, their stand becomes neither here nor there as most of the software services companies would have non-hiring clauses in their contract.
So, the best way to grow in your career while being posted on long-term onsite project management is to pickup engagement management activities for your company and also seek to move somewhere else (either back to the company or another customer engagement) at the right juncture by succession planning.
Posted by: Shankar | January 6, 2008 05:16 PM
Does Infosys permit (encourage?) their onsite managers to host blogs within the Infosys corp intranet?
A blog would certainly give a documented and widely available time line of how the OM was "going the extra mile" without the logjam and uncertainty of 'hoping' that status reports go up and down the various management layers.
Mohan, re Knowledge Management: that's a clinically correct phrase indeed lol! "..it is the manager’s responsibility to ensure that the client specific information is de-referenced before it enters the service firm’s ecosystem".
Posted by: mark mcclure | January 7, 2008 12:25 PM
Diwakar, Shankar and Mark,
Your observations are valid. The real challenge I see in the field is that long long-term onsite PMs are not always aware of the need to pickup engagement management activities for the company as they sometimes feel challenged by the need to balance the stakeholders’ drivers.
Mark,
To your question, Infosys permits and encourages onsite and offshore managers to host blogs and wikis within the intranet. Ref: http://www.infosys.com/newsroom/press-releases/2007/infosys-world-best-intranets.pdf Likewise, Infosys’ Kshop (Knowledge management portal) is widely used.
And yes, though “Knowledge Management” is a clinically correct phrase, googling is getting to be a synonym for it too. :-)
Posted by: Mohan | January 8, 2008 03:48 PM
I agree with the Account Manager.
In my company - InfoBeans, we treat everyone as a face of the company - whether offsite or onsite. The person who is onsite is the eyes and ears of the vendor and many times clients would actually be disappointed if they are not told about possible opportunities of expanding the engagement.
So even if an onsite manager is 100% billable, one of his key responsibilities is to make sure that the client is getting the best out of the relationship. If that means cross selling/up selling, stream lining processes at both ends and other tasks and chores, then that is all justifiable in my opinion and experience.
Regards,
Siddharth Sethi
Posted by: Siddharth Sethi | January 11, 2008 06:35 AM