30 May 2015 – Flamengo vs Fluminense (Maracanã Stadium)

Street Art in Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro – Panorama picture

What a great city!

28 May – Final Group Presentation

In the past for weeks, all 4 teams worked very hard on their assignment and today each team had the opportunity to present to the other teams, to their customers, to Pyxera and to IBM the final results of their work.

Since the final presentation was at the Sebrae location, my team members and myself felt at ease and had the advantage of having internet access 🙂

The meeting was started by Alcely Strutz Barros, Corporate Citizenship representative from IBM Brazil. She welcomed everybody and in particular the four Clients the CSC team had been engaged with. After that she showed the order of the presentations and it turned out that our team was first!

Team SEBRAE (Jeannette, Rui, Kathy and Han)

The SEBRAE team Han, Kathy, Markus, Felipe Rui, Alice and Jeannette

SEBRAE is the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service. SEBRAE is a non-profit, private entity with the mission of promoting the sustainable and competitive development of small businesses.

Current situation In the last couple of years, SEBRAE had to handle an enormous increase in the demand for the setup of small and medium enterprises (SME). The various branch offices handled the growth well but it meant that employees had to work very hard and that in a lot of cases the support of interns and assistants was needed.

Issues
Because of the enormous growth, the various branch offices changed individually their way of working in order to handle all the requests. Result is that the branch offices now have a different way of working, the processes are no longer the same and they use different forms in different branch offices.

Final Delivery
The growth that SEBRAE handled in the past was only possible due to the flexibility and dedication of the SEBRAE/CE staff. If they have to grow the same percentage in the coming years they either they have to change. Out team developed a Customer Journey framework based on SEBRAE’s Customer Service objectives that would effectively facilitate the anticipated growth in demand in the coming years.

This was all presented by Kathy during an excellent presentation session. She explained the way we worked, pointed out the extensive interviews we had with various people, she pointed out that IBM Design Thinking we applied and she explained key functionality of the Business Process Management solution.

Kathy presenting the SEBRAE case

The SEBRAE team

Kathy presenting

Han presenting the Customer Journey

Audience

Team Instituto Aliança (Mike Stefani and Christian)
Instituto Aliança (IA) is a nonprofit organization focused on improving the quality of life for young adults and their families by providing education programs and training in ICT (information communication technology), personal development, social skills, and work ethics.

Final Delivery
The team developed a strategy and execution plan for an alumni program for (former) com.dominio.digital (CDD) students to reconnect and stay in touch with IA after having finished the initial CDD education.

Mike presenting the IA case
Team ITEVA (Kitty, Alex and Matt)
Instituto Technologico and Vocational Avançado (ITEVA) is a nonprofit organization that develops programs focused on empirical science, technology education, and technical training. ITEVA provides training in several areas including information communication technologies (ICTs), low cost energy efficiency, thermodynamics, green construction, and organic farming.

Final Delivery
The team developed a strategic plan to adapt and incorporate the Midiacom training program‘s methodology into Ceara State‘s Vocational Schools Program.

Alex presenting the ITEVA case
Team STDS (Eva, Kevin and Simon)
The Secretariat of Labor and Social Development (STDS) is a department within the state government of CEARÁ that contributes to the socio-economic development of the state. STDS coordinates and executes public policies in the areas of job creation and entrepreneurship, social assistance, and nutritional/food security.

Final Delivery
The team described and mapped out the existing technical processes and identified gaps to enhance data analysis and measurement of Ceara`s youths and employers.

Eva presenting the STDS case

 

#cscbrazil #csc #cscbrazil19

25 – 27 May – Working on the Deliverable´s and final presentation

Monday 25 May

Last week we worked very hard on all our deliverables:

• Detailed process map (Han)
• Process description (Kathy and Jeannette)
• Business Process Management (Rui)
• Customer experience poster (Han)
• Final presentation (Rui and Jeannette)
• Short version of final presentation (Rui, Jeannette and Kathy)

This week, it is fine-tuning of our deliverables, checking for (typing) errors and going once more through all our documentation and notes to make sure we capture everything.

The customer experience poster and the detailed process map where my responsibilities. I did most of the work for the process mapping already last week and with feedback from Jeannette and Kathy I finished this on Monday. The customer experience poster was finished Monday afternoon but we realized that it would have a bigger impact if it would be in Portuguese instead of in English. We asked Felipe if he could help us out and asked him if he could translated the poster into Portuguese by Tuesday evening so we could print it on Wednesday. He promised that it would be possible so that would be great. Nevertheless, Felipe would have the English poster ready for tomorrow meeting.

Han, Rui, Kathy and Jeannette ready to go to the office

Jeannette, Kathy and Rui working hard

Working hard

Han, Jeannette, Kathy and Rui having fun

Tuesday 26 May

We were supposed to give today the final presentation to the stakeholders of SEBRAE/CE. But the director and other managers had suddenly other meetings and were not available for us. This was a big disappointment for us because we worked very hard and really had the opinion that our advise would be very useful for SEBRAE in the (near) future.

Well, we gave the presentation anyway, not to the Management team of SEBRAE/CE but to a group of employees who we spoke with during the previous weeks, our main contact Alice and the assistant to the Director. We all did a part of the presentation.

• Introduction and Methodology used – Kathy
• Insight gathered and Issues Identified – Jeannette
• Recommendations – Han
• Business Process Management – Rui
• Next steps and conclusion – Kathy

The presentation went great and especially the part from Rui, the Business Process Management opened their eyes… “Why has nobody ever told us that this is possible?” was the feedback he got.

Just before we finished our presentation, the posters were brought in. I handed them out at the end of the presentation. They all showed great interest in the poster with the Customer Journey Experience.

Wednesday we expected to have a ´free´ day since we were done with the presentation for SEBRAE/CE and we were almost finished with the short version of the presentation for the Final closing session on Thursday. However, Alice wanted to go over the presentation with us once more and I still had to change the text on the poster from English to Portuguese. Kathy and Jeannette still wanted to go over the documentation so we ended up going to the office at 10:00 and finished in the office at 17:00… with a good feeling because we finished everything. The poster was send to the printer and would be ready on Thursday.

Thursday 28 May

Felipe holding the SEBRAE Customer Journey Created by the CSC Brazil 19 – SEBRAE team

 

 

 

 

 

#cscbrazil #ibmdesignthinking

 

 

21 May – Thursday evening – Crab Dinner

Fabiana told us that the previous CSC team had on Thursday evening, their weekly Crab dinner at Praia de Futuro. Since we had only been to Praia de Futuro to lay at the beach at Croco Beach but never or dinner.

So, we decided to go there on Thursday evening for a crab dinner.

Kitty, Jeannette and Kathy enjoying a Crab

Kitty…enjoying a Crab

Han and Matt

It was a lot of fun, but the food (Crab) was not sufficient. We had to order several side dishes in order to get enough food too eat. The size of the crab was just too small  in order to get a good meal out of it. A couple of drinks, beer, caipirinha and whiskey made it for all of us a memorable evening, if not for the food than at least for the fun we had.

21 May – Presentation to Director of SEBRAE National

This time it was Kathy who gave the presentation about the CSC Program. During the presentation it became clear that the Director was interested in the outcome of our project and he asked us if it would be possible for us to present this to him after 15 June in, at the headquarter of SEBRAE in Brasilia. Unfortunatly, none of us would be available at that time since we all would be at our home country. Therefore we informed IBM Brazil about the request from the Director and see if they could take it over from us.

Kathy presenting to the Director of SEBRAE National

Piece of Art

 

 

#cscbrazil #ibmcsc

Typical Restaurants in Brazil

Since I am staying at a hotel, I have to eat in restaurants every day. That is not really difficult in Fortaleza since it seems that on almost every street corner you can find a restaurant. In the near surrounding of the hotel are over 25 restaurants so there is plenty of choice. Some of these restaurants are self-service or kilo buffet restaurants, Rodizio or Churrascaria. Below I will try to give you a short explanation of them.

Sal e Brasa

Kilo Buffet

A kilo-buffet restaurant is a self-service restaurant where you are guided to your seat and are given a small form. In the restaurant is a big buffet with all kinds of food. About a dozen different salads, 5 or 6 different pastas, sushi, 10 or more different kinds of meat, all kinds of vegetables, different kinds of rice etc.

Churrascaria

Churrasco is the cooking style of barbecuing or grilling different cuts of meats.

 Rodizio

The servers will come to your table with knives and a skewer on which are speared various kinds of quality cuts of meat, most commonly local cuts of beef, pork, chicken and sometimes exotic meats.

The biggest problem for non-Brazilians in kilo buffet restaurants is… how much fits on my plate and how much can I actually eat. It is very tempting to see all food at display and to pick just the items you want to eat. Especially when a kilo-buffet restaurant also serves Rodizio. Often the eyes are bigger than the stomach 🙂  At the end of the buffet, your plate is weighted. Of course you can go for a second round to the buffet and the additional amount will be added on your form. Drinks and Desserts are not included.

Gheller Churrascaria Restaurant

Just across the SEBRAE office is Gheller Churrascaria Restaurant. It is always busy and it is a fantastic value set-price buffet meal. It has a 60-item self-serve buffet (with seafood, sushi, pasta and hot vegetarian dishes as well as salads) and a 25-item meat Rodízio (waiters offering them round the tables), which includes exotica like javali (wild boar) as well as choice beef cuts like picanha and alcatra.
Read more about Brazilian food on the following website:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/top-10-foods-try-brazil

 

 

18 – 20 May – Working on final proposal and End Presentation

This week was all about, bringing structure in all the information we had gathered during the interviews the week before.

On Monday we had agreed with Filip that he would pick us up at the Hotel at 13:30 so we could work in the morning in the hotel. Fortunately, Rui, slowly recovering from Dengue fever, joined us on Monday during the meeting and even though he was not yet ready to join us for the full day, he was positive that he would be fine by the end of the week and that he would be able to handle the BPM topic and work on putting some slides together.

We went to the office in the afternoon and continued to work on our deliverables.

Tuesday was basically a copy of Monday, we worked on our deliverables in the hotel in the morning and went to the office in the afternoon. We spoke with the Director and he informed us that he would not be here next Wednesday and Thursday. That meant we had to finish our final presentation by Tuesday! In the evening, the Director took us out for dinner to Restaurant Coco Bamboo. On his request we had several local dishes as a starter (special prepared shrimps)  and the main course were also two local dishes Moqueca and Peixada Cearense. Both were absolutely delicious but the 5 of us could not even finish the 2 dishes we ordered….. Brazilians really eat a lot!

Wednesday similar to Monday and Tuesday, working on the final deliverables (proposal document, final presentation and presentation poster). In the afternoon we had a meeting with Alice and Markus to go through all our findings and check with them if the information we collected was actually correct. Their feedback was as we expected…we are on the right track.

 

 

 

 

#cscbrazil

How To Make A Perfect Caipirinha

Caipirinha

Caipirinha is Brazil’s national cocktail, made with cachaça, sugar and lime. Cachaça is Brazil’s most common distilled alcoholic beverage and a perfect drink for a Sunday afternoon at the beach 🙂

Recipe:

Ingredients: Half a lime cut into 4 wedges, 2 Teaspoons fine (brown) sugar, 2/3 oz Cachaça

Preparation: Place lime and sugar into old fashioned glass and muddle (mash the two ingredients together using a muddler or a wooden spoon). Fill the glass with crushed ice and add the Cachaça.

• Served: On the rocks; poured over ice
• Standard garnish: Lime, Sugar cane