A very short review in Capgemini Intranet (Talent)
In Hyderabad a SAP SD training was organized by Siemens India, which I participated for 2 weeks. The challenge was not only to learn as much as possible about SAP SD but also to gain a very small insight into the way of thinking and working with IT people in India.
The first impression was overwhelming. A big crowd, more like a wall of people was waiting in front of the airport entrance. I tried to separate that crowd and to organize a taxi to my hotel.
After some discussions I took a car to the hotel and the traffic caught me totally. I immediately forgot that in India the driving is on the left hand side but to be honest you can not figure that out. Indians drive nearly without any rules. Two traces in one direction means up to 7 vehicles (cars, motor rickshas, motorbikes, bicycles and hand trucks mixed) so you are happy to sit in a car.
The Siemens house was guarded on every floor by 2 securities. They checked everyone, whether we had an USB stick, a CD-rom or a camera with us. That was not allowed, security is handled really strictly, but not only here, in most public areas too. Around 40 people were waiting for the different trainings, most of them were from India. Gintautas from Latvia and me we were the only Europeans.
Our trainer, Mr. Ketan Dafle, asked what we were expecting from this training, all of us mentioned that we wanted to be educated in SD, because it was needed for our companies, or similar answers. But Ketan requested the Indian team members to be honest, everyone of them would attend this training to go abroad to earn more money in US or Europe. And this was one of the impressions I got in that very short time: most of these people are hungry for knowledge, they do have so much power to get better trained and educated.
Ketan wanted to get all of the eleven team members to a very high level. Therefore we should do our exercises minimum 3 times a week, but no one of us could imagine that seeing the booklet (400 pages) for the first week. As all members were well educated and most of them had already a good knowledge of the business processes, we had only very small discussions on this and we were concentrating on SAP SD, entering orders, confirming them, creating customers and pricing conditions and so on. Most important for me was to be trained on the customizing area.
Teamwork was perfect to me, I have never met this in that quality ever before on a training. The colleagues tried to get the best information and to practice as much as possible, really eager to learn. We also had a lot of fun together during our sessions. At the end Ketan really praised us for doing good work and we finished already our lessons on Thursday. So we had one full day (except the Saturdays) for training on the system and studying and reviewing our lessons together with lots of discussions for finding solutions.
As I wanted to have some memory of my team members, I tried to smuggle my camera into the office and it worked. The security guards didn’t check my bags perfectly anymore because I was friendly and patient to them. I had a bad conscience, because they trusted me. But now I have some photographs of my team in India.
During the Sundays I took a car with a driver from the hotel to do some sightseeing, as that is affordable for Europeans and gives a lot of comfort. I had the chance to see most of the important landmarks from Hyderabad, starting from the Charminar, to the famous Hindu temple Birla Mandir, the mosque Mecca Mashid and the world’s biggest Buddha statue in middle of Hussain Sagar. This is a big lake in the middle of the so called Twin town of Hyderabad and Secundarabad. On my last day before going to airport I visited Ramoji Film City, one of these 4 studio cities where the well known Bollywood films are produced.
Outside the SD training these two weeks were a big challenge for me: I met a totally different culture and tried to understand the way of thinking on a focus of working together with our colleagues in Mumbai. I am sure, when we pick up the best parts and ideas of both cultures, we will be able to fulfil all our business requirements and the requests of our clients.
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