Ken Private Limited Digitization Project: Issues and Recommendations

This report analyzes the Digitization Project undertaken by Ken Private Limited for Dogma International, focusing on the challenges encountered in digitizing the newspaper 'The Genesis Times.' The report identifies key issues, including the Filipino team's resistance to new technology, communication barriers between the Filipino and Indian teams, and a lack of understanding of customer needs. The analysis highlights the problems caused by these issues, such as project delays and client dissatisfaction. Recommendations include improving communication through training and informal relations, involving clients in the development process, and providing training to address technology adoption resistance within the Filipino team. The report emphasizes the importance of addressing these issues to ensure successful project delivery and client satisfaction, providing valuable insights into organizational behavior and project management within a global outsourcing context.

Running head: KEN PRIVATE LIMITED: DIGITIZATION PROJECT
Ken Private Limited: Digitization Project
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

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KEN PRIVATE LIMITED: DIGITIZATION PROJECT
Executive Summary
The objective of this report is to analyse the case study of the Digitization Project of Ken Private
Limited. Ken Private Limited is known for providing outsourcing knowledge and technological
services. It had taken up a Digitization project to digitize or develop digital archive of the
newspaper called ‘The Genesis Time’ for its client, Dogma International but was not able to
deliver the project on time due to various issues. The client was not happy with the image quality
of the newspaper as well. This report finds out that the main issues related to this project were
communication barrier, lack of understanding of customer expectations and resistant towards
new technology. This report recommends taking client feedback and involving the client in
project development for getting a better insight of the customer expectations. It also recommends
conducting communication training and building informal relation for overcoming
communication barrier. This report says that proper training of the Filipino team will overcome
the issue of resistance towards new technology.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Identification of Issues.....................................................................................................................4
Issue One: Resistance of the Filipino team towards learning and using new technology...........4
Problem....................................................................................................................................4
Recommendations....................................................................................................................5
Issue Two: Communication gap and barrier in Ken Private Limited..........................................6
Problem....................................................................................................................................6
Recommendations....................................................................................................................8
Issue Three: Lack of understanding of customer needs...............................................................9
Problem....................................................................................................................................9
Recommendations..................................................................................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
Ken Private Limited Company is in the business of knowledge outsourcing as well as
technology services. It was founded in the year 1991 in Texas, U.S. This company provides
fabrication services like digitization, imaging, data conversion, language translation, content
development and XML as well as mark-up services. Knowledge services include editorial
services, content enhancement, and indexing and vocabulary development. Technology services
involve designing, implementation and integration of systems. Ken Private Limited has offices in
Asia, Europe and America. It has more than 5000 number of employees. It is a well reputed
company with its net profit amounting to $ 90 million. Dogma International is a company that
deals with the business of content-publishing. This company has the right to archive the
prestigious newspaper called ‘The Genesis Times’. The Digitization Project of Ken Private
Limited was to create and develop digital archives of ‘The Genesis Times’ newspaper for Dogma
International. Ken Private Limited had aimed to archive 150 years of ‘The Genesis Times’
newspaper. The project began in April, 2004 and the company had promised to deliver digitized
newspaper for 10 years by July, 2004. The company had failed to deliver the project within the
correct deadline and the client was dissatisfied due to this reason.
This report discusses about the main issues that were stoping Ken Private Limited from
delivering the Digitization Project to its client, Dogma International. It gives a brief overview of
the main issues in terms of the concepts of organizational behaviour. This report analyses the
issues and gives appropriate recommendations to overcome these issues.

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Identification of Issues
Ken Private Limited had divided the activities of technology development and production
into two teams between the Indian and Philippines office. This company had taken up this type
of digitization project for the first time. The main focus of the Indian team was to develop
technological platform and delivering it to the team in Philippines. The Filipino team was
responsible for content processing as well as production by utilizing the new technical platform
developed by the Indian team. The Filipino team was divided into five departments: Quality
Assurance, Non-Production Staffs, Initial Process Imaging, Document Control and Distribution
and PPC or Production Planning and Control. All the departments have department managers
and the three Indian teams were lead by three assistant managers.
Issue One: Resistance of the Filipino team towards learning and using new technology
Problem
It has been seen in the case study that the Filipino team was not comfortable in using any
high-end or advanced technology. They had a preference towards the pragmatic or traditional
workflow. They believed that the pragmatic workflow would have been more flexible for
carrying out the production activities (Mariana, Daniela & Nadina, 2013). They were unable to
see the benefits or advantages of using and adopting the new technology that was being
developed in the Indian office. The initial and the most important issue was the resistance of the
Filipino team towards learning and using the advanced and high-end technology (Wittig, 2012).
This team did not understand the value and the importance of the advanced or new technology.
The Filipino team was accustomed to the existing technological platform for the
production and content processing purposes. They were finding it difficult to give efforts to

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adapt any new technology (Kinchin, 2012). They were unaware of the purpose of developing the
new technology. They had not been consulted by the management before taking this decision and
they did not understand value of the new technology (Nesterkin, 2013). They were resistant
towards the new technology because it would modify the current pattern of workflow and
working relationships among the people (Kunze, Boehm & Bruch, 2013). The team members
wanted to remain in their comfort zones by not adopting any advanced technology. The Filipino
team was not in a state to adopt the new technology. The IPI team members reported that the first
segment of the technology was not user friendly and required improvement. This led to the initial
delay of the delivery of the project. The DCD department found flaws and faults in the second
segment of the technology platform which further delayed the delivery of the project. The
resistance of the Filipino team members towards the learning and usage of advanced technology
was one of the main issues of that led to the delay and unsuccessful execution of the Digitization
Project.
Recommendations
Transparency: The Filipino team should be informed about the importance and the need
of adopting the new technology (Hon, Bloom & Crant, 2014). The value as well as benefits of
advanced technology should be explained to the Filipino team.
Understanding individual benefits: The management team should explain the benefits that
each individual will have by adopting the new technology. The company should make the
Filipino team understand that the new technology will ease their working procedures and it will
not have any negative impact on the employees (Cummings & Worley, 2014). The team should
understand that adopting the new technology will help to increase their level of productivity and
efficiency.

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Encourage participation: The company should encourage the Filipino team to participate
in the decision making process so that they can contribute their ideas and knowledge in the
adoption of new technology (Green, 2012). This will help the team members to get a better
picture and understanding about the technology and they will automatically understand the need
and value of the advanced technology. It will help the team to understand that the advanced
technology is needed for individual as well as the growth of the company.
Agreement: The project manager must establish agreement. In this case study, the project
manager is Mr. Sharma (Schalock & Verdugo, 2012). He should ensure that the Filipino team
and the Indian team are in terms of agreement regarding the development of the advanced
technology platform.
Training and Education: This case study shows that the Filipino team deals with
production as well as content processing. They are not familiar with technology development.
The company should conduct a training programme where the Filipino team will be taught about
the features of the new technology that will be developed (Anderson, 2016). The DCD
department should be trained to use the second segment of the new technology platform and IPI
department should be trained to use the first segment of the new technology.
Issue Two: Communication gap and barrier in Ken Private Limited
Problem
One of the main issues in the Digitization Project was the gap and barrier in
communication between the Filipino and the Indian team. The main reasons behind this issue
were physical separation and differences in culture, status as well as language. The Filipino
team was hesitant towards the use of the new technology platform that was being implemented

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by the Indian technical team. The Filipino team members were unable to understand the use and
application of the new technology platform, to the project as well as their team. The team
members did not express their concerns and shared their doubt with the project manager. They
continued to express their thoughts among the team members only. This widened the
communication gap and led to project delay. Later on the team found that there were technical
flaws and errors that led to the stop of the production process. This made the team think that the
new technology was not needed and would lead to inefficiency in the operations of the
organization. The project manager had conducted a meeting with the managers of the five
departments of the Filipino team along with few team members. It has been seen that nobody
was willing to express their concerns about the technical issues. A DCC department team
member murmured about the technological errors. The employee had also mentioned that the
Indian team was not paying much attention to the needs and concerns of the production team.
The premature evaluation about the importance of the new technology that was done by the
production team also led to the communication barrier.
It has been seen that the employees were not comfortable in sharing their thoughts and
concerns with the project manager which led to the close of the meeting. This clearly showed
that there was status issue where the employees were not ready to open up in front of the project
manager because of the high position attached to his designation (Lyons & Kuron, 2014). This
showed that their existed a communication gap between the team members and the project
manager. Later on the project manager overheard a conversation between managers of the DCC
and IPI department. The project manager came to know that the technical team was not
responding to the production team quickly and they did not have a supportive attitude towards
the production team. This showed that the technical team was not cooperative and there was a

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communication gap. Later on the project manager heard from the technical team that the
production team was not patient and were resistant towards the use of new technology. This
clearly showed that there was lack of cooperation between the two teams. Both the teams had
different perspectives. This can be caused due to semantic issues and block due to cultural
differences (Lee, Trimi & Kim, 2013).
Recommendations
Communication training: Ken Private Limited should conduct communication training
for the project team members (Bovee, Thill & Raina, 2016). They should arrange for video
conferences where the Filipino and the Indian team can communicate and overcome the cultural
as well as the physical barriers. This will also help the employees to develop their
communication skills.
Linguistic knowledge: There exists language barrier between the Filipino and the Indian
team. Both the teams should be trained to use simple language for communication between each
other (Moran, Abramson & Moran, 2014). The team members should not use jargons and dialect
in an inter team conversation.
Informal relations: The project manager should encourage both the teams to maintain an
informal relation as well. They can be encouraged to wish one another in any festival and
celebration. This will help to increase the effectiveness of the communication process by
building healthy relationships (Goetsch & Davis 2014). The formal communication process will
also improve. The Filipino team will not hesitate to share their doubts and concerns regarding
any technical issue.

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Employee orientation: Ken Private Limited should conduct an orientation program for all
the project team members and the team managers before starting the project. This will help the
team members of the Filipino to understand about the need of new technology. This will also
help the teams to know each other (Penn & Watermeyer, 2012).
Selection of proper communication channel: The teams should know to use proper media
while communicating with each other. They should know that video conference will be effective
in case of any emergency query and issue. In case of regular communication E-mail will be
sufficient. The members of the teams should be trained to be good listeners.
Issue Three: Lack of understanding of customer needs
Problem
Lack of understanding of the client needs is another main reason behind the problems of
the Digitization Project. The Digitization project was delivered after four months, but Ken
Private Limited had delivered digitized newspapers for only two years. Dogma International was
infuriated and had demanded high quality digitized newspapers within two months. The client
had given a warning to end the contract if their demand was not fulfilled. This made Saiyumn
Savarker to fly to Philippines to analyse the issue. Initially he met with the project manager and
QA to collect the details about the issue. Later on he had arranged a meeting with the client to
find out more regarding the problem. He got to know from the client that they were not satisfied
with the quality of the image. The image quality was of great importance to the client because it
played a major role in attracting the readers.
The project manager informed that they were not aware of the fact that the client needed
high quality images as well. The client had even told the project manager that nobody from the

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team had ever asked for their feedback. This showed that the project team did not understand the
needs and expectations of the client. The project team did not consider the opinions of the
customers (Yi & Gong, 2013). This prevented the project team from understanding the
requirements of the client, Dogma International.
Recommendations
Gain insights: The project manager of Ken Private Limited should conduct a general
meeting with the client before starting the project. This will enable the project manager to gain
an insight into the likes and dislikes of the client (Smith, 2012). The history of the client should
be considered while undertaking and developing a project for the client. Gaining insight of the
customer choice is extremely important for the project team to deliver a project that satisfies the
needs of the client.
Feedback: The client should be involved in the project development process so that they
can give feedback (Sashi, 2012). This will help the project teams to develop a project according
to the expectations of the client. The project team will be able to modify any feature in a quick
and effective manner. The feedback should be taken in the form of E-mail, forms, usability tests
and customer interviews (Roberts & Grover, 2012). This feedback mechanism should continue
till the delivery of the project. This should be an on-going process for the purpose of continuous
improvement.
Conclusion
This report concludes that the major issues that prevented the Digitization project to be a
success are lack of customer understanding, communication barrier and gap between both the
technical and production team and the resistance towards new technology. The Filipino team that

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was responsible for content processing and production were resistant towards advanced
technology. This report said that the Filipino team was comfortable with little use of advanced
technology. They did not understand the need as well as the value of adopting advanced
technology. This was one of the main issues of the Digitization Project. It has been
recommended that encouraging participation of the Filipino team in sharing their opinions and
training, educating them about the use of the new technology would help to overcome this issue.
The next issue was communication barrier. There was status barrier between the Filipino team
and the project manager and this made the team hesitate regarding sharing their concerns about
the technical issues. There was communication gap between the Indian and the Filipino team.
This was may be due to cultural differences as well as physical barrier. It has been recommended
that an employee orientation plan, communication training, correct selection of communication
media and building informal relationships will help to resolve such issues. The next main issue
that has been identified is the lack of customer understanding. The project manager and the
project team did not understand that the aesthetics were of huge importance to the customer. It
has been recommended that getting customer insights and continuous feedback from the
customers could help Ken Private Limited to understand the customer needs and expectations in
an appropriate manner.