telephony

From Telephony Consultant to Global Cluster Manager in just 6 months

In the beginning, Gonçalo was supposed to come in and help manage the daily operations of the Group’s telephony infrastructure. However, 2 weeks after his entry in the project, the LATAM’s cluster manager left the organization.

September 2019

Included in a nearshore deal which Lisbon Nearshore signed with a Global Retail & Luxury Group was the hire of a telephony consultant to provide consulting services from Lisbon in Voice-over-IP (VoIP) and Cisco telephony technologies.

The consultant, Gonçalo, started officially in mid-January and got acquainted with the complexity of the Group’s telecommunications infrastructure, divided into 3 clusters – EMEA, APAC and LATAM.

In the beginning, Gonçalo was supposed to come in and help manage the daily operations of the Group’s telephony infrastructure. However, 2 weeks after his entry in the project, the LATAM’s cluster manager left the organization. Having a need to replace the manager and seeing the technical and human qualities for the job in Gonçalo, his senior managers selected him to step in and become the de facto manager of the cluster.

Gonçalo went right into the trenches managing the call manager of the cluster and working on a project of migration and standardization of the cluster to the EMA and APAC ones. While working on this project, Gonçalo found a gap in knowledge from the FTS team (2nd Level Support team) based in the US and offered himself to start a weekly online training workshop. The feedback from the team was positive, growing the workshop from 2 attendees to 6 and in a matter of weeks, they were able to solve tickets more efficiently and became more confident when facing complex issues.

In the meantime, the Group’s contract with an outsourcing company to provide technical consultants for the management of the EMEA and APAC clusters was coming to an end. Seeing the added value Gonçalo’s work had on the LATAM cluster and noticing his managerial capabilities to educate, motivate and help teams become more efficient, the Group decided not to renew the contract with the outsourcing company and award Gonçalo with the management of two additional clusters.

Gonçalo is inserted in a Portuguese tech company, Lisbon Nearshore, whose purpose is to build technological development and consultancy centers in Lisbon, Portugal, for international clients. In today’s IT market, it is increasingly difficult to hire and retain top tech talent, a drama which we very well know; helping our customers to avoid it by sourcing the best talent available and putting it to work in high-performance settings. Gonçalo’s journey is a testament of the added value Portuguese IT professionals can bring to an organization.