BancNet Company Visit

 

     April 2, 2013, we had our last company tour for the term, which is with the company BancNet. At first, it was really hard to find where their office is since it is inside Equitable Towers, but as we found our paths and ways to their office, we are in awe at how clean and cool their office is. As what I've known about BancNet, they operate on ATM machines and communicate with banks for the connections made per bank in terms of the amounts withdrawn from their ATM machines. But, it was more than that. Through this company visit, I came to know more that they have broad products and offer other services which I didn't know they have.

     First and foremost, BancNet prepared 2 speakers for us. The first speaker, Mr. Rene Natividad, briefly gave us a background check on BancNet.

Mr. Rene Natividad

Whole connections of BancNet

BancNet's core values (EXCITE):

1. Excellence
2. Concern for the Individual
3. Integrity
4. Innovation
5. Teamwork

     They offer products/services such as: Cash Withdrawal, Cash Advance, GCash Reload, Checkbook Recorder, Intrabank Fund Transfer, Checkbook Recorder, and other services that banks offer. They also have their own backup and disaster recovery which gives member banks the benefit of being assured of uninterrupted connection/operation. Systemic Risk Management is also being implemented in BancNet. They establish their own net settlement limit for each member, and their system can put a limit on overdraft of each member. It gives the benefit of leverage on the sound settlement risk policy of BancNet thus, eliminates settlement risk for member institutions. They also have back office support which has automatic reconciliation of issuer and acquirer transactions across BancNet channels. Training and Marketing Support can also be seen as it provides continued education of the members, and income opportunities on the usage of BancNet products. Lastly, they have an assigned account manager per bank. The manager does the planning collaboration with the bank, actively participates in execution of the plan, monitors the bank progress, handles feedback mechanism, and conducts in-bank training.

     They now have ongoing projects such as business support system, which includes reconciliation, billing and settlement, partner management), PCI-DSS Certification, Intranet, e-Learning and Document Management System, and ITIL-Based Service Desk.

     The second speaker, Mr. Aidelbert, mainly talked about the IT Infrastructure of BancNet and provided us an image for this:

Mr. Aidelbert

      After the talk, we now proceed to the company tour. Here are some pictures I have taken:

     This company tour provided us students, a better understanding about what BancNet provides/gives service to their customers. We, the citizens, have a great benefit from all of their products as we use banks to care for our money, and BancNet is a part of the whole process. This gave me an opportunity to get to know more about BancNet, what are the things they do, and how they maintain the company's stable state. Since this is the last company visit for the course IT-EXPO, we really made the most out of this trip as we will miss this awesome visits in free. I am thankful for all the companies who accommodated and gave their time for us.

JP Morgan Chase & Co. Company Visit

     Last Tuesday, March 26, 2013, the whole IT-EXPO class had our company tour at JP Morgan Chase & Co. at Bonifacio Global City. Since this is the first time that I’ll be stepping at BGC, I am in awe and amazed at how clean and orderly the place is. Just like Makati, the whole place has a corporate-like ambiance that helps all the employees enjoy the vibe the BGC has. As per this blog post, since we were not allowed to take pictures inside their office, this post will just contain all the information JP Morgan taught or fed to the students.

     First and foremost, an introduction about JP Morgan Chase & Co. J.P. Morgan has a fully integrated franchise in the Philippines, comprising Investment Banking, Equity Sales and Research and Trading operations, Treasury and Securities Services, and the Global Corporate Bank. The firm has a number of legal entities operating in the country, including the Manila branch of the bank, which has a commercial banking license as well as a derivatives license, and a securities company with a seat on the Philippine Stock Exchange.

     JP Morgan Chase & Co. prepared 5 speakers for us De La Salle students. The first speaker gave us a brief introduction about what the company is. Included is his PowerPoint that contains trivias, history, and all the other things that we’ll know about their company. They also included the companies that they serve (e.g. Fortune, Barron’s, Universum, Top 50 organizations for diversity, and Philanthropy). JP Morgan also has their business resource group. This group contains their employees with disabilities. This is a good opportunity for the disabled as they are given support by this team. The company also promotes on caring for the communities. They do this by education, community, development, arts and culture. In lieu of the business resource groups, 2 organizations are within this context. First is the W.I.N, which provides access to tools that enable the successful retention, development, and advancement of women at all levels at JP Morgan. The second one is Pride which promotes the unity of the LGBT community. There is also employee engagement wherein they have health and wellness town halls, and sports fest.

     The second speaker talked about the hiring process of its employees and trainees. They have triple protection of your account, and the accounts within Chase. He also talked about the different job descriptions the company has, Service desk aegis, quality, supervisor, and operating manager.

     The third speaker, Mr. Jet Calub, associate engineer of JP Morgan Chase, talked about the branch infrastructure services. They provide solutions engineering, quality assurance testing, configuration management and automated employment for retail front office business units requiring a focused service based support organization. They have provided service to branches, ATMs, training, and law officers.

The scope of work that JPMC has are the following:

• Team responsibilities
• Infrastructure engineering and application development
• Changes and configuration engineering
• Service delivery and test management
• Asset and vendor management
• Architecture and security
• Project management

     The fourth speaker mainly talked about servers. On how he manages these servers and continue with their services by having continuous processes and by not having disturbance or inconvenience with these servers.

     Lastly, the last speaker is the most fun of them all. He also studied at De La Salle University so he connects easily with the students. His topic was about the network of the company. On how it supports the infrastructure group, and the virtualization which is the technology that allows you to work. He also talked about some of the introduction that we’ll be having at the company tour.

     After all the speakers have said the things they need to say, it's now time for the company tour. Their office is really huge and unlike other companies, they have their food court which houses different restaurants that offer them fast food. Also, one thing that amazed me is that they have a room for their conferencing within other rooms of the company. It is amazing that it is able to feature live conferencing and you can also view them with this wide 3 monitors and speakers. The whole class is so amazed with this. On the side note: when an employee leaves the door open (of any room), the Singapore branch of JP Morgan Chase & Co. will immediately contact their office to tell them that one of the doors inside the office is still open. Funny that their Singapore head office will call them just for that. They really follow a strict policy. Lastly, we have arrived at the penthouse. Even though it's scorching hot outside, we still managed to take pictures in the penthouse. Here are some of it:

     All in all, this experience is worthwhile as we came to know how JP Morgan Chase & Co. manages their resources and allocate time for them. At first, we actually didn’t know that JP Morgan was a bank; I really thought they are an accounting firm, but with this activity, we came to know more about different industries that also focus on the use of IT. We also were thankful for the free drinks machine as we benefited from them. This is the only company that I know that has the free drinks machine. They also advertise that we may take our OJT at their company. We just have to submit our resumes. Even though we were not allowed to take pictures of the company tour, we were able to take one at their penthouse, which has on awesome view of BGC. This company tour is just worthwhile for me as this is my first time stepping at BGC. The opportunity given to us was worthy of experience.

Taken at the penthouse of JP Morgan Chase & Co.

NetworkLabs Company Visit

   Last March 8, 2013, our subject IT-EXPO has arranged another company visit but this time, it is of different culture and style as of the previous company, which is Brady Philippines. NetworkLabs is a joint venture of Nokia Siemens Networks with various partners to establish a research and development center to support the operations of Nokia Siemens Network. They aim to provide software solutions and application support for the project that NSN undertakes. They also work in close partnership with NSN. This is just the simple introduction about the company, NetworkLabs.

    The visit mainly gave us a brief introduction about their company, what they do and offer to their clients, the services they give to their customer, and of course, the favorite among all, the company tour.

     Our speakers for the day were Mr. Marlon Tong and Mr. Advanson So. Both an alumni of our beloved, De La Salle University-Manila.

Mr. Marlon Tong

Mr. Advanson So

Ms. Edaine Paz

      Mr. Tong talked about how the company is doing in the Philippine context, how they started, everything is just about an introduction about the company. He also took questions and answered them with all of his knowledge. Right after, Mr. So took on the floor and showed his powerpoint about NetworkLabs.

     NetworkLabs is a telecom equipment manufacturer, one of the largest in the world in terms of revenue and size and provides a quarter of the world's telecom infrastructure. Nokia Siemens Networks is a joint venture of Nokia and Siemens. A communication and information technology company that manufactures mobile phones and portable IT devices. They also offer internet services like games, apps, music and media. It is also an electronics and electrical engineering company, that manufactures products for the energy, transportation and healthcare industry. He also showed the history of NetworkLabs and the timeline of the collaboration between Nokia and Siemens.

Core Values for NetworkLabs:

1. Customer Focus
2. Communicate Openly
3. Innovate
4. Inspire
5. Win Together

     NetworkLabs share these values to keep them align with their goals and enable them to synergize better. These values are also theor guiding principles for good performance. It is living these values that they can truly become a high performer.

Competency Development Plan:

• Acquire
• Acquaint
• Articulate
• Aspire

     NetworkLabs aims to enable every employee to do his job well and improve on their skills regularly and become high performers. It is the company's goal to sustain their competitive edge by investing on continuous development through continuous learning.

     After the brief introduction, Mr. So showed us screenshots of the systems they are using in the company. Here are some of the pictures:

     The next part was the tour. We were amazed on how their office has different themes per floor. Their first floor is Manila themed, while their second floor is Finland, and lastly, their third floor, which is on its development, will be themed in Anime. Here are the pictures I have gathered from the tour:

     NetworkLabs is truly one of the most well known companies in terms of IT. In our field, we have the opportunity to join NetworkLabs (internship or work) because they employ engineering and IT students. Indeed, this tour gave us a wider view on how these technologies came at work and how these are used. The information we have gathered here made us have a strong mindset in what work will be all about.

Brady Philippines Company Visit

When performance matters most

     Last Tuesday, De La Salle University students taking up IT-EXPO were given the privilege to visit Brady Philippines, a call center company located at Shaw Boulevard. Brady Philippines is an in-house contact center and support services arm of Brady Corporation.It offers back office, call center jobs & other employment related jobs. As we entered Brady, we were warmly greeted by their staff and with free food! :)

Mr. Allan Goh

     Our main speaker for the day is Mr. Allan Goh, who is the IT Infrastructure Manager for Brady. He came from Singapore. He talked about the role of IT, call centre infrastructure, the call center proper of Brady, the top 5 technologies trends in 2013 - 2015, and the key success factors in an IT career.

     For the Role of IT, the business strategy, IT strategy, IT are combined to create the IT services and infrastructure and then it is directed to customer services, supplier services, and the enterprise services. It is then embedded to the business, make IT as a business sense, and delivering quality of services and speed of execution. It can lower the total cost of ownership by simplifying IT infrastructures, lower operational and administrative costs as a result of the single infrastructure and better communication, greater efficiency and productivity in the support team, and increased integration and flexibility as we enhance the call center.

     For the call centre infrastructure, it involves the moving from disjointed voice and data communications systems at isolated call centers, to converged IP communication and integrated multi-channel interaction capability in a contact center. It involves the evolution of the call centers that we can see now.

Top 5 Technologies Trends for 2013 - 2015:

1. Consumerization and Mobility
2. Big Data
3. Hybrid Clouds
4. Reducing IT complexity
5. Integration of Social Media

Key Success Factors in an IT Career:

• Strong work ethic
• Positive attitude
• Good communication skills
• Time management abilities
• Problem-solving skills
• Interpersonal relation
• Self-confidence

   
     After the lecture, we were given the chance to tour around Brady for us to know how the company is doing their business. This is the much awaited moment for us :) We were led by Ms. Carol Co, an HR head from Brady. Here are the pictures that I have gathered from the tour:

Ms. Carol Co

     After the tour, we were given souvenirs, as a remembrance of our visit at Brady :)

     This visit is truly one of my most memorable moments as I have stayed in DLSU. Since it was my forst time to visit a company with my classmates and learn new things and generate new ideas that will soon help on my future career. I truly thank Brady Philippines for showing how welcomed we are in the company, and on giving us this opportunity to have a glimpse of our jobs in the future. This will serve as an inspiration for us while we are still in the making of being future leaders in the industry.