EMCOR Davao (Engineering Machinery Corporation) is the leading company of and market leader in the field of appliances, electronics and motorcycles. EMCOR is a 100% Filipino company whose primary business activity is the retailing of household appliances and motorcycles through the operation of retail stores in the islands of the Visayas and Mindanao, Philippines.
"main branch for Davao"
As we conducted the interview with the system analyst of EMCOR who is Mr Marcelino Vistal Jr , he cited many skills and characteristics an analyst must possess to be effective in developing a particular design in any kind of project. Costumer is the most important people in business industry, since analyst are dealing with any kind of customer, they must be customer oriented, which is actually defined as being understanding to the customer’s angst and difficulties.
To be customer oriented you have to:
• Listen
• Ask questions
• Forget about profit
• Forget about final purchase amount
• Forget commissions
• Forget about time.
• You have to WANT to help them, strictly to make them happy.
As a problem solver, an analyst is tasked to give various possible solutions to each of the problems raised by customers. Handling the problem is not really difficult because there is no one way solution for any problem. The main concern of an analyst is on how to communicate, deal, and understand what the customer really wants. It is easier to adapt their different personalities if there is understanding, patience and willingness.
Another point of Mr Vistal was Management Efficiency. It is being efficient and effective in managing its people who participates in the project. When you have a closed mind, you live in the ideas, opinions and attitudes that you have already created in your mind. You don't know if they are true. Because you make those opinons, attitudes and ideas with whatever feelings and information that you get with your five senses. Your senses can cheat you. No one knows what is the actual truth.
An analyst must be open minded, a good listener and professional with his acts and words.
An analyst should not only have the analysis for the project but he/she must consider the strength and weaknesses of each member of the team into whom his/she’s handling.
Management consists of the five processes, namely, planning, organizing, leading, coordinating and controlling. Management is basically an organization activity, the organization of work and resources, to achieve success. The successful organization of work and resources requires careful planning. Effective planning involves foresight of the potential obstacles and readiness to fight them. It is important to head the team and guide the team members on their way to success. While organizing and leading a group of people, management plays a vital role in the achievement of co-ordination and the exercise of control. Management is such a vast subject that it becomes difficult to restrict the definition of management to a few processes. Management is complex and critical and hence it is not right to confine its description to some management processes. Believing in the vastness of this subject, some prefer defining management as ‘all that managers do’. But what does a manager do? A manager is responsible for the successful implementation of management skills. A good manager needs to adhere to the basic management principles and exhibit the basic management skills in his/her personality.
He/she must be knowledgeable of the techniques on how to make the use of expertise that each member possesses. Of course to disseminate them to the right task. And so if the right people will be put is on the right task. The project will be a success.
There are a wide range of need analysis techniques, drawn from fields such as knowledge management, user-centered design, ethnography and anthropology.
Techniques include:
• facilitated discussions
• focus groups
• surveys
• staff interviews
• workplace observation
• contextual inquiry
• task analysis
In practice, more than one technique should be used with a selected group of staff, to ensure that a complete picture is built up.
This is one of the most important management skills. Leadership comprises of the efficient organization of the resources in achieving a company goal. Leadership involves the management of human resources with an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each member of the team. It is about leading the people and guiding them towards the accomplishment of a common goal. Leadership includes a just allocation of work to the resources, planning of the implementation of tasks assigned and helping the team with task completion.
This is another basic management skill that includes dealing with people, the most important asset of an organization. Encouraging the team members to speak up, come up with ideas and allowing them to make mistakes and learn from them can be described as a team building skill. To build a team, one needs to foster the team spirit in all of the team members. For the team to feel motivated to work, it is important for a manager to cater to their expectations, recognize their strengths and understand where they lack. The building of a team is about building the team spirit in members and maintaining it. The skill lies in knowing the team and encouraging them to take initiative and enthusiastically participate in every venture of the company.
He also cited that an analyst must be keen and detailed in terms of specification of the project as well as its entire operational process, effects as to its possible risks and benefits.
Being keen is ability to perceive and understand deeply. Systems Analyst is having systems analysis all the time in which it is a process of understanding in detail what a system should accomplish. Therefore, understanding is a basic characteristic an analyst must have to be effective in doing his/her job.
When something is meaningfully understood, it is retained much longer, can be built upon to acquire further understanding, is usually very versatile in the situations and ways it can be used, and facilitates creativity.
Being detailed is marking by abundant detail or by thoroughness in treating small items or parts when it comes to organizing projects analysis, being detailed oriented is essential. Analyst organizes gathered data before reviewing them or forwarding them to programmers. Attention to details means that you recognize the possible instances may occur during the entire operation of the project. An analyst must have a fundamental curiosity.
Being detailed is very important in keeping the project less risky because you may have prevention measures ahead of the occurrence of the problems in an ongoing project. This is possible if there is a concise analysis on each phase of the project. Curiosity and keen observation will be very useful characteristics an analyst must have.
Another thing, an analyst must have standardization in any phase of the project. Defining benchmarks will be helpful to lift the quality of the project as we must agree to quality over quantity view.
Benchmarking is the process of comparing the business processes and performance metrics including cost, cycle time, productivity, or quality to another that is widely considered to be an industry standard benchmark or best practice. Essentially, benchmarking provides a snapshot of the performance of your business and helps you understand where you are in relation to a particular standard. The result is often a business case and "Burning Platform" for making changes in order to make improvements.
However, having good characteristics will not be enough without proper knowledge to technology. Sir Vistal emphasized that there is no need to be expert in all of the innovations yet knowing the basics and as what it is in general will be already an edge.
The benefits of information technology in business is that Information technology has formed a major place in the different business areas. Most of the businesses have started their own in-house training for IT by their own staff. The different benefits in use includes: The use of IT is evidently a major component of work in businesses; Most responding companies prefer in-house training by their own staff for IT Training above other methods; The most important use of the IT by respondents is in office applications, followed by accounting software and sector-specific applications; and The sector-specific and project-management applications were expected to show the greatest growth in demand over the coming years. The analyst must be knowledgeable of technology. The analyst is not expected to know the intricacies of programming, but a decent general knowledge of concepts and terms is essential.
An analyst is not perfect yet should be aiming perfection. An analyst does not know everything, yet must at least familiarize everything. He/she must always be willing to learn to have continuous grow. As learning is a continuous process, an analyst must open to any ideas that he/she will be encountered during each phases. He/she must establish strong foundation of the basics to learn new things easily.
The manager, who is the former system analyst of the company, added that being determined to any task is the root of any successful project.
Then, an analyst must be competitive to achieve a certain goal this is not only to solve the problem but also to provide a solution with quality and efficiency factors.
Being competitive is one of the characteristic an analyst should posses so that he/she will constantly aim for improvement. Competitiveness relies on the flexibility of the persons in charge for a particular project. The higher quality of excellence a team have, the higher quality and competent project they could produced. And most of all, an analyst must have Integrity and Ethics.
The single most important quality you can ever develop that will enhance every part of your life, is the value of integrity. Integrity is the core quality of a successful and happy life. Having integrity means being totally honest and truthful in every part of your life. By making the commitment to become a totally honest person, you will be doing more to ensure your success and happiness in life than anything else you can ever do.
Integrity is a value, like persistence, courage, and intelligence. It is your choice of values and resolution to live by those values that form your character and personality. And it is integrity that enhances all your other values. The quality of person you are is determined by how well you live up to the values that are most important to you. Integrity is the quality that locks in your values and causes you to live consistent with them.
Integrity is the foundation of character. A person who has integrity also has an unblemished character in every area of his or her life. One of the most important activities you can engage in, is developing your character. And one of the best ways to develop your character is by consistently doing the same things that a thoroughly honest person would do in every area of his or her life.
Applying ethics in business makes good sense. A business that behaves ethically induces other business associates to behave ethically as well. If a company (or a manager) exercises particular care in meeting all responsibilities to employees, customers and suppliers it usually is awarded with a high degree of loyalty, honesty, quality and productivity. For examples, employees who are treated ethically will more likely behave ethically themselves in dealing with customers and business associates. A supplier who refuses to exploit its advantage during a seller's market retains the loyalty and continued business of its customers when conditions change to those of a buyer's market. A company that refuses to discriminate against older or handicapped employees often discovers that they are fiercely loyal, hard working and productive.
The best way to promote ethical behavior is by setting a good personal example. Teaching an employee ethics is not always effective. One can explain and define ethics to an adult, but understanding ethics does not necessarily result in behaving ethically. Personal values and ethical behavior is taught at an early age by parents and educators.
By the way, the company implements AGILE modeling process in which they can have deployment even during the development of the system. In which I find it practical and prone to system innovations in which I believe a good factor that should be consider.
Sources:
http://wilstop.info/2007/08/25/emcor-davao-philippines/
http://www.teach-nology.com/edleadership/effective_management/
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071023175655AAVnb2c
http://www.asqsandiego.org/articles/ethics1.htm
http://www.goal-setting-guide.com/articles/success/importanceofintegrity.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmarking
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