Industrial Placement Report, Summaries of Business

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Industrial Placement Report

Of

Nilusha Harini Gurusinghe

INFORMATICS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

in collaboration with the University of Westminster, UK

BSc (Hons) DEGREE PROGRAMME in Information Systems with Business Management

REPORT OF INDUSTRIAL PLACEMENT

of

Nilusha Harini Gurusinghe

in relation to the work carried out at Workerbee Pvt Ltd 79/10, C.W.W.Kannangara Mawatha, Colombo 07

Year of submission: 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Appendix G Screen-shot of Google results showing the local business directory entry for the search term

• I Illustrations ………………………………………………………………………..
• II Abbreviations ……………………………………………………………………...
• 01 Introduction ………………………………………………………………………..
• 02 Company Profile …………………………………………………………………
  • 2.1 Details of the Company ………………………………………………………
  • 2.2 Company Goal ……………………………………………………………..
  • 2.3 Introduction to Workerbee ……………………………………………...
  • 2.4 Services ……………………………………………………………………...
  • 2.5 Organizational Structure ………………………………………………………
  • 2.6 Engagement Structure ………………………………………………………
  • 2.7 Values of Workerbee ………………………………………………………
• 03 Work Carried Out …………………………………………………………………
  • 3.1 Internet Research & Report Writing …………………………………………..
    • 3.1.1 Projects and Details ………………………………………………...
    • 3.1.2 Problems, Solutions & Comments ………………………………….
  • 3.2 Website maintenance ………………………………………………………….
    • 3.2.1 Projects and Details …………………………………………….
    • 3.2.2 Problems, Solutions & Comments ………………………………...
  • 3.3 Search Engine Optimization …………………………………………………..
    • 3.3.1 Projects and Details …………………………………………….
    • 3.3.2 Problems, Solutions & Comments ………………………………...
  • 3.4 Blog Creation & Maintenance ………………………………………………..
    • 3.4.1 Projects and Details …………………………………………….
    • 3.4.2 Problems, Solutions & Comments ………………………………...
  • 3.5 Content Writing ………………………………………………………………..
    • 3.5.1 Projects and Details …………………………………………….
    • 3.5.2 Problems, Solutions & Comments ………………………………...
  • 3.6 Animated Card Designing ……………………………………………………
    • 3.6.1 Projects and Details …………………………………………….
    • 3.6.2 Problems, Solutions & Comments ………………………………...
• 04 Reflections & Comments ……………………………………………………………
• 05 Appendices …………………………………
  • Appendix A Detailed view of Services offered by Workerbee …………………
  • Appendix B Competitor Analysis for Workerbee: Screenshot …………………
  • Appendix C Video Conferencing Report: Screenshots
  • Appendix D Manhattan: Coop & Condo Sales S&P - ………………… Closing Values
  • Appendix E Printer Review website: screenshot …………………
  • Appendix F A screenshot of www.shannagendra.com ………………… - ………………… “neurologist new york”
  • Appendix H The Business Parable: Individual Blog …………………
  • Appendix I One paged brochure sample for Workerbee …………………
  • Appendix J Animated cards - Screenshots …………………

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1 Organizational Structure Page 7 Figure 2 Engagement Structure Page 7 Figure 3 Values of Workerbee Page 8

INTRODUCTION

This report consists of the details related to the Industrial Placement Year which I went through as a requirement of the B.Sc Degree programme I follow at Informatics Institute of Technology. An introduction of the company which I worked for, categorized descriptions of the work I carried out during the work period, my own reflections about the work experience and the skills I improved during the time are described throughout the report.

Industrial Placement is an important component of the B.Sc (Hons) degree programme and is the 3rd year of the four-year course, which is referred to as a “sandwich degree” once the IP is included. This course is conducted by IIT in collaboration with University of Westminster, UK. During the IP, the students get the valuable opportunity of relating to and applying the knowledge and skills they learned so far, to work in the industry. A student who is after their first two years of the degree at IIT moves into placement with a lot of theory and skills in store to be applied at work. The main expectation of IP is to have the students return to their final year of study with a valuable work experience which is supportive to the advanced academic studies and the individual project of the final year. Also, the IP experience provides a stronger push-up for the students when they go for a job in future.

The experience I received working at Workerbee (Pvt) Ltd as a Business Analyst for the IP period of 48 weeks is priceless to me. I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to join them, especially as an employee of the opening Workerbee team. More details about the company and the work in which I was engaged during my time there is to follow in the coming chapters of this report.

COMPANY PROFILE

2.1 Details of the Company

Name Workerbee (Pvt) Ltd

Postal Address 79/10, C.W.W.Kannangara Mawatha, Colombo – 07

Email Address [email protected]

Website www.workerbee.com

2.2 Company Goal

“To give our clients time to think strategically and act competitively. We recognize that operational efficiency is as strategically important as your product development and sales functions.”

2.3 Introduction to Workerbee

Phrasing its own preface as, “ An innovative provider of business support services, dedicated to helping organizations cost-effectively enhance their business performance ”, Workerbee emerged in 2008 under the initiative of Mr.Nirmalan Navaratnam, a skilled businessman with experience working in Australia, UAE and USA.

Mr Navaratnam has been born in Sri Lanka and has migrated at an early age, finally setting his own business in USA after achieving his MBA from Columbia University in the City of New York. He has been inspired at setting up Workerbee as he recognized many of the US business firms leaning towards outsourcing small scale business activities to Asian countries as a result of the recent financial recession.

2.5 Organizational Structure

Figure 1

2.6 Engagement Structure The following diagram is the Engagement Structure of Workerbee which displays the procedure of engaging a client to the staff.

Figure 2

2.7 Values of Workerbee As a fundamental part of their business strategy, Workerbee recognize the following core values.

• Work Quality - Workerbee hold themselves to the highest standards possible and their goal is to exceed the expectations they have set for themselves.
• Customers - Workerbee recognize their Customers as the lifeblood of the business and are dedicated to every client's success and want to meet or exceed the client expectations on every engagement.
• Employees - Workerbee believe strongly that their success is dependent upon the collective energy and intelligence of all of the employees which is why they strive to create a collaborative work environment in which the employees continually develop their skills and succeed to their highest potential.
• Responsibility and Integrity: Corporate and Social - Workerbee take responsibility for their own success and failures, celebrating success and seeing failures as an opportunity for growth. They strive for integrity and seek to meet the highest ethical standards. Workerbee believes in being financially successful and socially responsible and perform the duty to the society by giving a percentage of their profits every year to help those less fortunate than them.

Figure 3

2 Video Conferencing & its importance in Cost Reduction

This was the 2nd individual research which I was assigned. The client wanted a detailed description of Video Conferencing and its advantages against air traveling for business purposes, in order to support for an important decision making procedure regarding facing the financial crisis.

• To collect information through research in Google on video conferencing, companies providing video conferencing services, video conferencing costs and air travel costs.
• To analyze the collected information and produce a report, answering in detail to the client’s questions. (Refer Appendix C for a screen shot of two pages of the report) 3 Manhattan Real Estate Sale related to Recessions

The 3rd^ research which was conducted by me according to a client request. The client needed to know the best time to buy real estate, particularly in Manhattan, after an economic recession. A graph had to be drawn using data taken from the following two links:

• http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=^GSPC
• http://millersamuel.com/charts/gallery- view.php?ViewNode=1208449530UATU X&Record=
  • To search online for articles, blogs, forums and other documents written about the subject and to point down the important sections taken from each document, providing a link to the source.
  • To create a graph on MS Excel to display Manhattan Coop & Condo Sales and Stock (closing) values for the period of 1989 to 2009 1st quarter. (Refer Appendix D for the graph)

3.1.2 Problems, Solutions & Comments In the first I conducted where I needed to indentify correctly the key competitors of Workerbee, my progress was slow as I wasn’t accustomed to the search terms to be used and therefore my results varied from the expected. Later on I improved myself and produced research results with lesser number of errors. In certain research topics, finding reliable information on the internet to support your query is difficult. The ability to use different key terms to achieve successful results was practiced throughout, which improved search findings more & more towards the end.

3.2 Website maintenance

3.2.1 Projects & Details

Project Title Description & the Purpose Tasks Assigned

1 Creating html pages of a website on Printer Reviews

This was the first Dream Weaver project which was assigned to me. The client owned a website in which she posted descriptions of Printer Reviews. She wanted us to convert the content written about printers in Word documents to html pages in Dream Weaver, using appropriate images for each printer we wrote on. Instructions were provided along with a list of printers and sample websites to refer to in order get a feel of the required structure.

• To get to know the Dream Weaver tool with the support of the supervisor and to create sample html pages similar to the ones required by the client.
• To work on creating html pages for the Printers requested by the client, using the provided content and images found in Google. (Refer Appendix E for a screenshot of a Printer Review page on the client’s website) **2 Editing the html pages of a website created for a travel agency in New York
• Rio Travels**

A client’s site which was developed and designed by our web / graphic designers had to be proofread and reviewed for any errors in design and content. Most of its content was written by us business Analysts. Corrections had to be made to the html pages using Dream Weaver before launching the website.

• To go through each page of the site, mark down the errors and to make the corrections using Dream Weaver.

3 Creating and editing a website for SEO purposes for a Neurologist based in New York

For SEO purposes, we created multiple sites for a Neurologist practicing in New York. The first website done was under the Doctor’s practice’s name. A second site needed to be created to link with the other one, which had the Doctor’s name as its domain.

• To shift the necessary files (html, java scripts etc) from the previous site to a new folder, ready to be uploaded to the new server under the new domain.
• To update the links in those html

to that website theme can be recognized and used appropriately within the site to improve its SEO.

which is decided from their average search volume as shown in Google Adwords tool.

• To use the top three keywords and suggest html names that should be used as the page titles of the website for SEO. 2 Further research on SEO techniques such as link building, use of xml sitemaps and indexing to search engines

Those were researched especially to be applied on the Neurologist’s website who was the very first client to request SEO from us. We needed to find all the existing methods which could to be used in order to get his website to appear higher on search engine results.

• To research and document highly recommended methods for link building, use of xml sitemaps and indexing to search engines.
• Apply the discovered methods on the client website and keep tracking the changes in the search engine results for specified keywords. 3 Research on Google Local Business Directory`

This was researched in order to make our client’s website appear on Google’s Local Business results which appears when you use a search term with a region specified as one of the keywords. Ex: neurologist new york

• To discover the procedure of entering a website into the Local Business Results.
• To enter the doctor’s website into it. (Refer Appendix G)

3.3.2 Problems, Solutions & Comments

The major issue which I had to face under this section was the difficulty in filtering and recognizing the correct information with regards to SEO techniques. Going through a number of reports, video tutorials and training sessions in www.lynda.com and a few other websites, I was able to remove the doubts which I had regarding most of the SEO techniques.

3.5 Blog Creation & Maintenance

3.5.1 Projects & Details

Project Title Description & the Purpose Tasks Assigned

1 Creating of an Individual Professional Blog on Wordpress.com - The Business Parable

I was asked to create an individual professional blog using Wordpress blog tool offered free. This was to be used to display to clients who demand to see content writing work done by our team members. I was instructed to go through a training session at www.lynda.com to get to know about wordpress’s advanced features. The blog can be viewed at http://thebusinessparable.wordpress.com/. 4 articles based on research done at different times were submitted to this blog time to time, as mentioned under Content Writing category.

• To go through the training on Wordpress blog creation at www.lynda.com
• To create an individual professional blog with a suitable name and post articles to it time to time. Refer Appendix H for a screenshot of the blog.

2 Creating the Company Blog on Wordpress.com

The company was interested in creating a common company blog adjoined to the company server to which each Business Analyst was to contribute with articles chosen from those written for their individual blogs. This company blog can be viewed at http://www.envelocity.com/wordpress/

• To research and find the method to adjoin the Wordpress blog into the company server. (Found and went through a video tutorial available online and submitted a document regarding the procedure and created the blog)
• To submit blog postings to the blog (taking mostly from those written for my individual blog) and maintain it.

English. 3 of the team were engaged in this project and I was asked to do the first review of the articles written by the others, after some time.

• To review articles written by two other colleagues.

2 Blog posting 1 for the company blog on “Remote Assistance Software”

A short research was conducted online in order to discover a suitable remote assistance software tool to be used for office purposes when working remotely. The results suggested Team Viewer as the best available option. The blog posting can be viewed at http://www.envelocity.com/wordpress/2008/ 1/06/remote-assistance-software/

• To research and discover appropriate remote assistance software tool by comparing the top tools available online.
• To write a blog on the findings, stating the reasons for choosing Team Viewer above others.

3 Blog posting 2 for the individual blog on “What is Twitter”

The 2nd^ blog topic which was assigned to me was to write on Twitter. The article was written based on reliable facts found online. The blog posting can be viewed at http://thebusinessparable.wordpress.com/ /11/18/what-is- %E2%80%9Ctwitter%E2%80%9D/

• To search online, read up on Twitter and to write the blog posting.

4 Blog posting 3 for the individual blog on “Live Chat Software”

A research was done to find the best Live Chat software available to be used on a client website. At the end of the research, the blog posting was written based on the findings. Link to the blog post: http://thebusinessparable.wordpress.com/ /12/23/live-chat/

• To research online about available Live Chat software and to write the blog posting based on the findings.

5 Blog posting 4 for the individual blog on “Fax To Email”

A short research conducted online regarding the available Fax To Email services in order to figure out the best one to be used for our company. Link to the blog posting:

• To research on the available Fax to Email service providers and document the findings as a blog posting and post to the blog.

http://thebusinessparable.wordpress.com/ /12/30/fax-to-e-mail/ 6 Blog posting 5 for the individual blog on “Search Engine Optimization”

A basic blog topic assigned to be written on, in order to update the blog. Link: http://thebusinessparable.wordpress.com/ /01/05/search-engine-optimization- %E2%80%93-seo/

• To research online, find important facts related and to write a blog posting to be posted on the blog.

7 Blog posting 6 for the individual blog on “Robots.txt file”

Researched for the purpose of SEO and converted the findings into a blog posting. Link: http://thebusinessparable.wordpress.com/ /01/23/robottxt-file/

• To research online about robots.txt and gather the important points into a blog posting.

8 Content writing for Brochures

The company needed a few sample brochures to pick up ideas to create a final Workerbee brochure.

• To go through competitor brochures and others provided, think innovatively and write content and design a few sample brochures; one paged, two paged, 4 pages etc (Refer Appendix I for a screenshot of one paged sample brochure)

3.5.2 Problems, Solutions & Comments

The overall content writing tasks were less erroneous than others but there were times when my writing didn’t satisfy the superiors, which lead me to edit them according to feedback. After some time, I grasped the writing style they were looking for and adjusted myself accordingly.