I'm legal!

So after three months here (and with less than one week left), I am finally legal to work in Argentina! This morning I braved the rain, wind and darkness (summer solstice in US = winter solstice in Argentina) and was rewarded with a new work visa to stick in my passport. It also involved a truly comical amount of paperwork*: a full copy of every page of my passport (including blank ones), the legalization of the translation of the apostille of the notarization of my FBI criminal background report and my signature on no less than fourteen certificates.

So while we are on the topic, I thought I would give a brief summary of some of the work that I've done here (I'll try to edit out the consultanteese). Our client is an organization made up of 22 non-profits that work together to find ways of using technology to further their missions (i.e. help people). The idea of our project is to see if there are "back end" or business pieces that the members could share. So rather than twenty two members each having their own purchasing department, the twenty two could use one common purchasing department that could do a better job than any of them could do individually. This idea is called shared services (and shares some characteristics with outsourcing) and apparently its been pretty successful in the private sector for a number of years.

We started with six potential shared service areas with a plan to narrow that down and develop some good ideas and materials (deliverables!) for two of them. Over the first two months we created teams for each area made up of people from five or six non-profits. We worked with the teams to identify their needs, try to get some numbers (how many people work in that area, how much money is spent - this was vastly more difficult than you'd think) and figure out the benefits of moving to a shared service. We then worked with the executives in the client and the member organizations to figure out that the two areas to focus on were a shared IT help desk and shared procurement department.

That decision happened in early May and for the last seven weeks we've been working to figure out how these shared services could really work. In the end, we've come up with some draft ('high level") ideas about:

• where the services would start and could grow ("scope" or "vision")
• what the services would do ("operating model")
• who would run the services ("governance model" and "staff model")
• why the organizations should use the services ("business case")
• and the benefits of using them ("benefits")

So what happens next? Well, assuming our funding comes through, we will have a second phase of this project where we put together the detailed costs, make some decisions about the pieces that are still up in the air (for example: there are a couple of options for who would run the services) and really try to involve the field**. So far we have been working almost exclusively with people from headquarters, but since the whole point of these organizations is their field work and the conditions in the field are vastly different than at HQ (or what most of us are used to), it is really important that these services are designed for the field, by the field (pick either a FUBU*** or Tommy Boy reference there).

So there you have it, four months of work in four paragraphs and one bulleted list. Ah the beauty of consulting.

-Ciao

This picture is from the San Telmo feria and has nothing to do with anything. But I love the idea and the last time I saw a "Free Hugs" sign was sophmore year when I made one of our pledges run around west campus with one during Springternational. Also, if my memory is right, that was the day I got the incredible picture of Lundy smoking a cigarette with a plastic dinosaur gripper thing.

 

* Now I tend to exaggerate a lot, but I swear that this is 100% true.
** Also, I figure out a catchy blog name that starts "East Africa by _____"
*** I hope you pick the FUBU reference cause wow, I pulled that out of nowhere