| PHAROS Programme in continuous improvement of enterprises in Colombia by UNIDO: main events of March 2003 Overview of workshops, meetings and public events. The UNIDO programme in Colombia "Introduction of continuous improvement practices into selected enterprises in 4 regions of Colombia" (later named in Colombia by industrialists as "Pharos programme") started in December 2001 as pilot project to verify methodology and implementation in different industrial sectors. Its first phase included training of national consultants and executives from 4 key industrial regions as follows: Bogotá (leather industry), Eje Cafetero (electronics), Ibague (textile) and Barrancabermeja (metal processing). The project included training of entrepreneurs and installation of UNIDO PHAROS software to be used as managerial information tool for business performance monitoring. The development of continuous improvement practices based on using Pharos became the main project target at its second stage. Several workshops and meetings took place in Colombia in March 2003 within the implementation of this project exactly one year after the first training in 2002. The objectives were in reviewing intermediate results of the Project and obtaining the feedback of its participants. Brief overview of the main events is presented below. Pereira, Eje Cafetero.
Project status: The pilot enterprises are from electronics / electro-technical industrial sector. The Project implementation had been very successful, the results are positive and measurable. There are strong intentions of the regional counterparts to expand the project accommodating many other enterprises which expressed intentions to take part in the new larger programme for the region. Much of the achievements were the result of the efficient work of Mr. Luis Gonzalo Bernal, national consultant and support by Mr. Felipe Gonzalez, Director of CORDELEC (Electronics and Electric´s Chain of Eje Cafetero) and regional Chamber of Commerce. The overall situation in the region is illustrated by publication in the newspaper "El Diario del Otún" on 2 March 2003. Another publication was made by “La Tarde”, newspaper in Pereira on the same day. Regional Project Advisory Committee Meeting of Eje Cafetero in the Chamber of Commerce took place on 11/03/03 and was opened by Mr. Felipe Gonzalez, Director of CORDELEC (Electronics and Electric´s Chain of Eje Cafetero) who covered the issues of Project implementation in Pereira, achievements and prospects of its continuation. The Committee members representing Chamber of Commerce, CORDELEC, the University of Quindío, Technical University of Pereira and SENA, expressed satisfaction with the results of the project in the Eje Cafetero region. 
The Committee was enthusiastic in the evaluation the benefits of the Pharos software and continuous improvement methodology introduced to participating enterprises. The members pointed out that it brought up a new paradigm for the managerial culture of the SMEs in the Coffee Axis region by forcing industrialists translating planned strategies into numbers and starting working with indicators and PCs. The software became an integral part of the overall UNIDO methodology, supporting implementation continuous improvements and it is actively used by the management of participating companies as it is easy to work with. As general observation, the companies which took part in ISO 9000 certification had shown greater speed of acceptance of the continuous improvements methodology and PHAROS tools, however all companies which started practical applications had significant progress in productivity, quality, competitiveness, overall company performance. Pilot enterprise "Integrando Ltda"., Dosquebradas, Risaralda. The industrial enterprise "Integrando Ltda". achieved significant progress in the development of its competitiveness, productivity and efficiency of its own available resources usage during the participating in the Project. Mr. César Augusto Herrera, General Manager of Integrando Ltda, is active user of PHAROS software, developing innovative applications had improved his company performance up to 28% for the passed 9 months. 
Workshop with pilot companies in the Eje Cafetero took place at Technical University of Pereira on 12/03/04 after opening by Mr. Felipe Gonzalez, Director of CORDELEC followed by Mrs. Liliam Ochoa, national coordinator of the UNIDO project, Mr. Serge Golovanov, Mr. Oswaldo Rossi both UNIDO experts, and Mr. Luis Gonzalo Bernal, national consultant. All participants took part in the discussions sharing their experience in developing Pharos applications in their companies, views on the project implementation and setting new Pharos programmes. The discussion included review of business decision simulations based on Pharos software, presented by Mr. Serge Golovanov and Mr. Oswaldo Rossi.  The workshop was visited by the University governor and dean, who greeted workshop participants. They mentioned that the University could support the programmes for SMEs in the region with know-how regarding the use of UNIDO information technology tools for monitoring enterprise performance and resource planning. All the pilot project participants were presented during the workshop and accompanied with one or several senior managers or assistants. Each participant provided feedback regarding the experience of particular company, obtained results as well as desirable improvements of the software.  The common conclusion of the participants was that the project has been very successful in introducing improvements of the enterprise management skills, quality, productivity, performance and competitiveness. 
It actually helped to create new culture and techniques of company management, introduce the set of indicators allowing business monitoring and comparison between enterprises in the same sector. Consequently this opens the opportunity for developing reference model for the national industry.  Conference for industrialists of the region took part in the Chamber of Commerce, on 13/03/03. It provided participants with additional information about the objectives and content of UNIDO Programmes for continuous improvement as well as possibility for entrepreneurs to ask the questions about its content and implementation. The methodology and first results of the UNIDO project implementation in Colombia was presented by Dr. Oswaldo Rossi, UNIDO International Consultant, Mrs. Liliam Ochoa and Mr. Luis Gonzalo Bernal. 
During the conference interesting contribution had been provided by Mr. César Augusto Herrera, General Manager of Integrando Ltda, who shared his experience of participation in the pilot project with convincing and interesting arguments about its content, possibility to improve enterprise performance considerably, develop new business culture and become more competitive. He outlined PHAROS benefits for managers while comparing it to Balanced Score Card methodology. 
Meeting with students and professors of the University of Quindío, Pereira, 13/03/03 Dr. Serge Golovanov, expert and president of GOLEM IMS GMBH, was invited by the Directorate of University of Quindío for a meeting with students and professors to review PHAROS software, its history, describe research done while developing information tools for SME managers and results of the UNIDO project in Colombia. The university is well established regional educational and scientific research center preparing specialists in many disciplines required in this quickly developing industrial region (www.uniquindio.edu.co). 
Ibague
Project status: The prototype enterprises are from the textile and cloth manufacturing sector. The industry has its specifics such as heavy influence of seasonal production when the production is stopped completely and many enterprises are kept closed for several months, wide use of subcontracting in various forms including external or semi-external enterprises called as “satellites”, quick replacement of products with new ones, easily replaceable production personnel due to wide supply of labor force on the local market. Mrs. Diana Ocampo, newly appointed national consultant brought valuable and effective assistance to participating enterprises. Project Advisory Committee Meeting took place in the Chamber of Commerce of Ibagué on 14/03/2003 hosted by Mr. Gabriel Espinosa, Director of Promotion and Development. The agenda included presentation of the UNIDO project plans to the Committee and review of the project implementation in the region. During the meeting the Advisory Committee members described the situation in the regional industry to project. Several interesting proposals were made by Mrs. Victoria Kairuz Marquez, Director of “Centro de Productividad del Tolima” including the effective promotion of Pharos as managerial development strategy tool. Workshop for pilot companies in Ibagué took place in Laboratorio Empresarial, SENA on 14/03/2003. It provided the project participants with latest information regarding new developments in Pharos applications, methodology of defining target values for enterprise indicators and benchmarking options based on Pharos database. The manager of pilot enterprises and their assistants took active part in the discussion asking questions and sharing views on their needs, Pharos application developments and further participation in the Pharos programmes. All participants recognized PHAROS as an important tool of the management to monitor efficiency of their companies.  Conference for regional industrialists took place in the Management Training Center of Chamber of Commerce on 15/03/2003 providing detailed overview of UNIDO project, its objectives, methodology and results obtained in the regions and questions and answers. Bogotá
Project status: The pilot enterprises are from the leather and shoe production industrial sector. The review of the first training course and description of the enterprises were provided in the news of 2002. The Project implementation had been successful, the results are positive and measurable. There is an intention of the regional counterparts to expand the project accommodating other enterprises which want to take part in the new follow-up programme in the region. Much of the achievements are the result of the efficient work and contribution of Mrs. Miryam Hurtado, national consultant and effective support of Ms. Liliam Ochoa, National coordinator. Training workshop for national consultants took place at UNIDO office in Bogotá on 16-17 March 2003. It included overview of latest developments in Pharos software such as comprehensive export/import utility, benchmarking options and simulations of managerial decision based on Pharos enterprise model as well as results of the previous project stages. 
Workshop for industrialists from pilot companies in Bogotá, 18/03/03 took place at University of Jorge Tadeo Lozano. The agenda of the workshop included the following topics: Pharos as a managerial tool in the continuous improvement process, review of Pharos application results, working with business targets and interpreting graphs, Pharos v.2 update: Import/Export module and its impact on developing main application, simulation of the managerial decisions on business development based on Pharos enterprise model, overview of coming release of Pharos with Produce plus and new Pharos version 3.0 features, benchmarking options with Pharos for self-evaluation enterprise developments, questions and answers.
After the workshop there was intensive discussion, initiated by S.Golovanov as trainer of the joint course which took exactly one year ago in the same room. Some interesting notes made during the meeting are presented below. Q: What main problems entrepreneurs have had for the passed year? A1: There was no cultural tradition regarding management and use of information technology in enterprises, collection and entering data, systematic analysis of various performance aspects; A2: Several managers mentioned that they cannot plan their business for complete next year because of market instability and seasonality. They would like to plan company business for the next month only. Q: What are the benefits you obtained during the participation in the Project? A1: Improvements in enterprise operations, understanding of business monitoring and its performance indicators. A2: Detection of problems in quality. A3: Pharos has been an incentive for companies to establish systematic approach to company management, planning, having their accounting up-to-dated and learn working on PCs. Q: Many of project participants expressed the wish to be able comparing the enterprise data with the other enterprises in the same sector or internationally to identify their business position. This is possible only if each company agrees to provide its key indicator values (possibly anonymous) to some centralized server which process it and gives access to all entrepreneurs for comparing themselves to others via Internet. Would you be ready to share such key information? A: About 80% of presented managers answered positively, one manager gave definite negative answer (possibly he did not understand that not all company data should be shared but only selected key indicators), and one abstained. Q: If you are offered to pay for the after project support what would you expected in return? Answers (combined) • time support provided • external consulting in continuous improvement • support in international marketing especially in entering European Market • assistance in attracting investors, advice in credit and investment • free updates 
Some other comments and observations by the participants: • Technology has to be transferred not only to management but to employees as well to be fully successful • The software and participation in the programme had brought significant shift in the managerial culture in the pilot companies, which could not happened otherwise within this short period of time. It resulted in new abilities to analyze information, collect it routinely, and take advantage of PHAROS as managerial information tool, view business performance and available resource usage. There are many consequences of such considerable improvements in all business processes, including understanding of losses which management had been unaware of previously, commitment to systematic monitoring of company activities, etc. During the Advisory Committee of Bogotá Meeting, Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, 19 March 2003, the participants representing major industrial associations and government, were briefed about the project status and preliminary results. With growing acceptance of the SME importance in economics of the country, there is a need to make its development stable and effective. Typical problems of SMEs such as lack of qualifications, managerial culture, financial and human resources, simple and easy IT tools for managers, inadequate monitoring business performance, unseen losses and underutilized use of resources, lack of competitiveness under the growing impact of globalization, late response to problems in competitiveness, quality, productivity, sales makes SME sustainability difficult. SMEs are of need for know-how and tools for introducing continuous improvement practices while having fundamental limitations in obtaining all these. There are no providers of similar service packages for SME sector at the necessary cost- per-enterprise level because of variety of reasons. The result is in growing unresolved problems of SMEs and its unstable development with significant unmonitored losses and inefficiency accumulated in the national scale. The Pharos project in Colombia demonstrated the unique results and potential existing in the continuous improvements programmes. It makes possible bringing measured increase of productivity, quality, managerial skills and competitiveness in the key industrial sectors delivered at some acceptable cost level. The instruments of such increase are the Programmes for SMEs involving larger number of enterprises and delivering the unique package of services at demand. Barrancabermeja, Santander
Project status: The pilot enterprises are from the metal processing industrial sector. Most of them have local large national producer of petrochemicals “Ecopetrol Corporation” as their main customer. The Project implementation had been very successful, the results are positive and measurable. There is strong intention of the regional counterparts to expand the project accommodating many other enterprises which want to take part in the new programme in the region. Much of the achievements are the result of the efficient work and contribution of Mrs. Rosa Isabel Rodríguez, national consultant of the project. Regional Advisory Committee Meeting took part in the Chamber of Commerce on 20/03/2003 with review of the project implementation followed by conclusion that the project very well accepted by enterprises, many new businesses wants to join. It already allowed to obtain significant changes in business performance and culture of running businesses. The questions discussed included the issues of continuation in new format, number of companies taking part in new programme and procedures of enterprise certification.  The Committee members underlined that on-site training and installation support had been very important for the success of the project. Mr. Dario Echeverry Serrano, Director of the Chamber of Commerce, noted that the training of managers has to be done during the implementation phase not before, because, although it is known that the entrepreneurs have weaknesses, they can’t afford to wait until every company is ready. In other words, training has to be done on the fly. Developing new applications at corporate level: ECOPETROL Corporation refinery. The meeting which took place on 20/03/03 at the corporate headquarters allowed to identify new corporate strategy of potential PHAROS applications. Mr. Hugo Toscano, one of the corporate managers outlined the growing need to increase the level of the suppliers in quality, productivity and performance. The number of such suppliers is considerable and the work on increasing their performance is very complex but necessary in view of growing globalization and principal need to develop national industries in Colombia. The positive experience of UNIDO project in Colombia bring about the possibility to achieve such objectives within controllable time span and feasible financial resources. 
The Press Conference, which took place in the regional Chamber of Commerce on 20/03/03 allowed local journalists to get access to the first hand information regarding already obtained results of the project. It was followed up by the interview given to the local TV station about economic development in the region by project team and one of the local entrepreneurs. Mrs. Claudia Roa Guzman, Deputy Manager of company MEC Ltda, Barrancabermeja described her experience of learning continuous improvement methodology and using Pharos for changing her company performance drastically to the program moderator Mr. Juan Carlos Sierra. 
The text of the interview can be reviewed here. The workshop for entrepreneurs from pilot companies in Barrancabermeja took place in computer class room of SENA training center on 21/03/03. All managers of the pilot companies taking part in the Project were presented at the training which was opened by Mrs. Rosa Isabel Rodríguez, regional national consultant of the UNIDO Project followed by Mr. Serge Golovanov. The managers were provided with comprehensive feedback regarding the PHAROS applications, best practices, answered multiple questions and described future developments. The workshop participants took active part in the training and discussions, provided stimulating feedback regarding the positive results of the Project and showed significant interest to the project continuation. 
Meeting with students and professors of the Centro de Innovación Tecnología y Desarrollo Empresarial (CITDE UCC), Barrancabermeja took place in the evening on 21/03/03 by invitation of Prof. Orlando Serrano. The Centro is educational and training organization preparing specialists in many disciplines required in this quickly developing industrial region. During the meeting the educational applications of PHAROS, main PHAROS features and experience of its application in Colombian enterprises were reviewed. The management described the activities of the CITRE and mentioned the interest of including PHAROS into the courses for SME management. It was stated that CITRE could become additional training facility for the SME management in the Santander province. There were questions and answers provided during the meeting regarding the collaboration options as well as potential Pharos features and applications. 
Positive results of the 2002/2003 UNIDO Project and accumulated expertise developed in Colombia provide challenging prospects of delivering the unique package of services to many other Colombian SMEs in the regions. What participants say about the results? review the references here >>>. Letter of entrepreneurs in Eje-Cafetero province to Colombian Ministry of Industry here >>> UNIDO Programme for Colombia 2002-2003: one year later in 2004 Mr. Cesar Herrera, Integrando, one of the most active participants answers to the questionnaire regarding the achievements and results >>> UNIDO Programme for Colombia 2002-2003: Mrs. Claudia Guzman, Manager of MEC Ltda evaluates the results in TV broadcast >>> The Component II phase of UNIDO Programme for Colombia begins, March 2002 >>> Additional information about Training and Upgrading Programmes for SME >>> Do you have some comments or look for setting up similar programmes to improve SME performance in your country? let us know here! Español? Íà đóññêî́? 汉语 Français | 
