And I thought Accountants were boring
My cousin has got a job at KPMG, one of the top accounting firms in England. She started yesterday and, while saying it was a dull day, told me some very funny things...
1.Her computer broke down (first day and it breaks, good work). Anyway, to get someone to fix it she had to call the IT Specialists. In India. My initial reactoin was "How long is it going to take him to get out here?". It turns out that India just calls London and sends someone round. Or should I say up, because, actually, the IT people are on the floor below my cousin. Here's a money saving idea: Cut out the Indian call centre and have the peopel in the building take the calls directly. And I thought accountants were good with money.
2. Paperchase. This is a program that they use in her office. If you are going to audit a company, you can look at all the audit records for that company from audits that have already been done on it. I assumed it just brought it up on a computer screen, but oh no. Apparently some secretary downstairs has to find the file and bring it up to you. Oh the fun you could have with that... (No, not that file, I wanted the one before that," and so on.
Tha's all for now
1.Her computer broke down (first day and it breaks, good work). Anyway, to get someone to fix it she had to call the IT Specialists. In India. My initial reactoin was "How long is it going to take him to get out here?". It turns out that India just calls London and sends someone round. Or should I say up, because, actually, the IT people are on the floor below my cousin. Here's a money saving idea: Cut out the Indian call centre and have the peopel in the building take the calls directly. And I thought accountants were good with money.
2. Paperchase. This is a program that they use in her office. If you are going to audit a company, you can look at all the audit records for that company from audits that have already been done on it. I assumed it just brought it up on a computer screen, but oh no. Apparently some secretary downstairs has to find the file and bring it up to you. Oh the fun you could have with that... (No, not that file, I wanted the one before that," and so on.
Tha's all for now
posted by CJM | 7:21 PM
10 Comments:
Wow...companies are...not organised. India? Weird, weird system...
why don't they just bang on the floor?
sirreene will undoubtedly put another spin on this comment.
sorry.
Lol. Well we're not complaining ;-). All those jobs...
But seriously, it has to do with logistics I guess; HP or Dell or whoever the computer company is need one point where their logistics are organized - and that one point should be cheap.
If you cut out the one large call centre in India and replace it with one small one in every major city (or even country) keeping them responsible for their areas alone, it would work out to be much more expensive than one call centre which in turn calls up the repair chaps closest to the problem.
Hey, don't blame me if companies find that a pound or a dollar go much further in India than they do anywhere in the first world. All the sarcasm in the world won't change that.
It's the price you pay for an unsustainable standard of living. If it bothers you, too bad. That's economics for you.
Fair enough, but couldn't you save money by, you know, letting the people on the floor in the company's building sorting out the problem, and save the pounds that go to the call centre altogether, rather than merely reducing the costs, but still spending money. Just let peopel call the IT specialists.
Those IT specialists probably cost a fair amount to hire. Given that any city will have a large number of calls coming in, it simply doesn't make sense to have trained (and hence expensive) IT people handling customer calls and logistics when all that job needs is someone who knows english and has a measure of politeness.
It's just a coincidence that your cousin's office shares a building with the IT people for the company which sold her that computer. There must be thousands or hundereds of thousands of computers of that particular brand in the city.
So, the logical solution is to hire a secretary or ten to handle those calls and the logistics - someone to organize everything and tell which IT specialist to go where and so on. I'm sure you can see where this is going...
No, you're missing the point, the IT Specialists are on the floor below her. They are in the same building, working for the same company.
I'm aware of that. But the computer company wishes to be able to choose who handles the maintenance of their machines. Today they're one floor below your cousin's office, tomorrow they're not - Hp/Dell/Whatever have contracted out to someone else. Happens all the time.
Of course, in the current scenario, it makes sense for your cousin's organization to build up a relationship with the maintenance chaps (stop calling India and just bang on the floor :D) - but that works only for them and only for now. It definitely doesn't for the several thousand other computer users in the city.
No no, they are employed by the company, not contracted out. They work for KPMG, (not Dell or HP etc.). The people in the office work for KPMG (like everyone else in the building), they don't provide services for the rest of the people in the city.
Ah. That's a different matter, then. Knocking on the floor sounds good!
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