BUILD GE NEWSLETTER Issue 8 8

BUILD GE Account Newsletter

April 2015

ENABLING USERS IN THIS ISSUE

I suppose the very first thing I should do is explain my name, Mario Goricsan. I am Hungarian by birth and so is my family for many generations. I am named after an obscure Italian footballer from the 1970s and my surname is Croatian, there is even a small town that bears the name. Not to mention I spent the majority of my life in the United States. All around, very confusing for anyone meeting me for the first time. All of my schooling was done in the US as well as my introduction to the working world via family businesses. As such I am no stranger to getting my hands dirty for the greater good. However the majority of those years were spent in sales and as a result I learned that getting a NO countless times helped me find the most efficient way to get a YES.

I joined Computacenter on February 5th 2015 so I cannot be considered a true veteran just yet. However, in this short time I believe I have fallen in love with this company and the GE account as much as one can fall in love with this sort of thing. I am a member of CC International SM team with responsibility for Hungary and for all EMEA Appliance and Lighting from a business perspective. Many of you are familiar with the Service Desk located here in beautiful Budapest, and although I sit in a quieter part of the office I am thankful to have them in close proximity. I joined from T-systems International and further back IBM, having fulfilled International Service management roles at both companies

No use in comparing apples to oranges, and I wont. I learned a great deal in the past but wish to learn even more and apply it as I can, drawing on this great big team to save me from reinventing the wheel. Already Ive been able to hit the ground running thanks to Mark, Chris, Rowena, Paul, Alessandro and the list goes on for all the people willing to lend their experience. We worked very intensely with all of you in driving this implementation. The hard work, dedication, enthusiasm and relentless desire to build up and run a great service entity for GE really makes a difference.

Looking ahead of the year I see some challenges ahead for myself and the team of the partner we have here in Hungary. We are supporting 7500 assets across a wide range of businesses and if things stay their course this number will be increasing. I am stepping into a very firm foundation which fortunately for me means I just need to make sure I do not mess things up too much. On a serious note it puts me in a position to concentrate on making sure GE is happy and healthy and that we grow with them.

I am an American football fanatic and ex player, while trying to incorporate European football into my sports capacity. I have a truly international family with siblings in the US, UK, and Hungary. Thanks to the spouses of my six siblings we have increased our cultural diversity to levels which would make any corporation envious. Family meetings revolve around which continents to expand to. Very much looking forward to 2015 and beyond, and am very happy to be onboard.

Mario (Service Manager, Budapest)

In the hot seat this month One of our newest members of the team, a warm welcome to Baran

Page 3

Careful: Men at Work

This month we head over to a city where East meets West, a city of cultural experiences and historical attractions.

Page 4

Super Mario by Mario Goricsan

GE NEWSLETTER | Issue 8 2

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With the take-on of the L1 Service Desk from GE, came responsibility for delivering improved customer satisfaction figures via the Voice of the Customer (VOC).

The VOC is not new to us, in L2 EUS we have been exceeding our VOC SLA targets month on month since mid-2014. However L1 starts from a more challenging position - to deliver the same level of satisfaction as for our L2 EUS service, but to do it quickly and in many cases, under more difficult procedural conditions.

That has not stopped L1 - Since February the L1 Service Desk has implemented initiatives to improve our VOC position, adopting current L2 VOC process and also identifying and implementing new ideas to further improve. Ben Harrison (Senior Analyst, The Problem & Reporting Team) has been working closely with Adam Pfliegel (L1 Quality Manager) to ensure adoption of the current L2 model and identification of further improvements.

To date we have implemented the following:

Scheduled Weekly Analysis and Performance

meetings - identifying trends and corrective

actions

Monthly Top Tips Posters by country Do

more of and Do less of

Monthly performance posters How is

L1 performing?

Individual meetings with L1 staff to

understand feedback and to identify

corrective actions

Monthly Engineer Pack Webinars and

Daily MTD Performance Reporting

VOC is now firmly on the daily agenda for L1 and in a relatively short space of time we have seen performance improve from February into March and continue 2015 MTD

In current trend, we stand to begin meeting SLA by the end of May 2015. This represents a tremendous achievement by Adam and the L1 Service Desk Teams in Budapest.

Well done to all who have actively worked together to deliver this improvement.

Michael McDonald, UK

An excellent, prompt and expert service which is very much appreciated. The technician was extremely helpful and knowledgeable. Thank you very much for helping me resolve this issue.

Gergely Liszkay, Hungary

Gergely Liszkay is very customer focused and highly professional. He is really effective, it was a pleasure to work with him.

Rafal Pruszynski, Poland Thorough, professional and courteous...

Roderick Beltran, UAE Roderick was extremely professional, pleasant and helpful. Highly appreciated. Many thanks!!"

Salah Eddine Hayari, Italy Salah Eddine Hayari, technician in charge of my last case is a role model of kind, highly qualified and effective service professional, hopefully we continue to support and sponsor talented young professionals as himself, thanks!

Atakan Sercan Cimen, Turkey Atakan was outstanding, as usual. Impressive turnaround time. Received my new device in one day, and was converted over immediately. Excellent service. We are lucky to have Atakan in our office!

Well done all!

DID YOU KNOW?

Your competence and spirit always to solve the problem for me of enormous help over the last 3 years. You manage the balance between customer-always-first vs the needed IT policies / regulations very well, and I feel it is fair to say you greatly contribute to the overall very positive perception of the IT Support Team. The bar you have set is pretty high

You saved my life... Enabling users. Some great feedback for some fantastic service..

Darko Sculac, Germany

Super Service! by Paul Howarth

Above: Ben Harrison

Left: Adam

Pfliegel

Below: Italian Servicedesk

GE NEWSLETTER | Issue 8 3

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PHOTO CORNER

FAST FACTS

1,296,000 The number of flights each month powered by GE Aviations engines.

194,400,000

and thats how many passengers they carry each month

DID YOU KNOW?

In 1896, General Electric was one of 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average, and its the only original one thats still there

Name: Baran Yalcin

Job title: GE Global Operations Consultant

Location: Istanbul, Turkey

Q: Which famous person would you most like to see play you in a film?

A: Rachel Weisz

Q: My best work achievement has been

A: Introducing a new approach and a new way of doing daily checks that were done in my previous work experience.

Q: If you inherited a kilometre of land, what would you do with it?

A: I would build apartments and rent them all.

Q: My last holiday was to ?

A: United States of America / Seattle

Q: Describe a typical work day

A: A typical work day is when you talk to people, find solutions to their IT related problems and make users happy and satisfied!

Q: The song that means the most to you

A: R.E.M Losing My Religion

Q: If you were stuck on a desert island and can only take one thing, what would it be?

A: A Lighter.

Q: If you could have dinner with 3 people, alive or dead, who would they be and why?

A:

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Siddhartha, Sun Tzu

They are people who have done extraordinary things in life and created extraordinary works.

Q: The way you would spend your fantasy 24 hours, with no travel restrictions

A: I would love to spend a day in Maldives relaxing on the beach.

Q: Three words that my friends would use to describe me are:

A: Social, Caring, Trustworthy

In the hot seat with Baran Yalcin

Born and raised in Turkey, Istanbul Mr. Baran Yalcin had a decent academical education and after working in several other places, he started working for General Electiric Turkey as a Global Operations Consultant on 15th of December 2014.He works at GE Corporate IT located at the Windowist Tower in Maslak, Istanbul, Turkey. The site he works for has plenty of users from various sectors of the GE businesses. Time to time it gets busy as users can be demanding. However in general they handle it with ease together with his colleague Mr.Rza Utku Batralp.

Baran dreaming about the Maldives...

Christmas in Dubai? - Standing from left: Tony Joseph, Roderick Beltran, Shreeganesh Acharya and Alex Alfaro

Seating from left: Parthasaradhi Nair and Sanjay Thakre

Welsh Warrior Our very own James Jones at the recent Wales vs Australia rugby match. Lookin good James!

GE NEWSLETTER | Issue 8 4

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Welcome to Istanbul. by Richard Zecca

A magical meeting place of East meets West, with some of the best cuisine you will ever taste, layer upon layer of history and an endless supply of hospitality Welcome to Istanbul

Chris Towell (Service Manager) and I touched down at Ataturk airport in Istanbul in mid December to visit the 2 GE sites in the centre of the city. Traffic was heavy and we reached our hotel a few hours later. A visit to the kebaps

(kebab restaurant) that evening helped recharge some tired batteries.

The following day we went to visit the Healthcare site at Levant. A quick hop on the very efficient metro and we were there. A warm welcome from the team and an introduction to the newest member Baran Yalcin (see Page 3). It becomes clear that it is difficult to talk to the engineers as users are constantly coming in their office, looking for assistance. Shoulder tapping is one of the biggest challenges in Turkey and virtually no one calls the Servicedesk, instead preferring face to face assistance.

Lunch with the team, including some fine Iskender and a rich tomato soup (Domates Corbasi) followed by meetings for the rest of the day. Back to the hotel and with some handy tips from the team on places to visit, we head into town. Our main target is the awe-inspiring Blue Mosque in the centre. We arrive at 7pm to see the

doors being closed. Our disappointment disappears with Aegean vegetables and spicy Anatolian kebaps for dinner.

An early morning meeting with our Computacenter partner and we are off again to the GE Windowist building to meet our engineer Utku for a quick chat. Then back to the Levant building for a meeting with the GE IT Leader for the region.

A last meeting with the engineers and off to the airport we go. It starts to rain as we slowly weave through the heavy traffic. The weather has been kind but our eyelids are getting heavy as the drops patter the windows of the taxi.

My name is Pierre Solomon: widower, 2 children (one girl 33 years, one boy 27 old). When I start my professional life, I was Sociologist but my hobby was IT. As I am lucky, I do the main part of my professional life in this domain. First as formative and after 5 years, I was hired by Henkel. In this company I start as internal trainer. I have a lot of functions in this company that I leave 12 years later as Application Manager dedicated for Sales Force (Unix, Windows, Notes, Oracle).

I decided to leave Henkel to join a sister German company named Cognis. It was really interesting due to the fact that I arrive just after carve-out with Henkel and we need to create all IT services for this new company. With my skills and experience I was in charge at the corporate level to create all desktop Services and Help-Desk for this new company across the world (85 locations in 50 countries). In a second time, 3 years later, we have a global project to outsource all IT services (infrastructure, Datacenter, SAP, Service Desk and Desktop Services). After a long internal discussion Computacenter was the winner. At this time, it was the main contract for CC Germany with a worldwide scope.

During 5 years we are working together not in a Provider/Customer relationship but in a

partnership. As Global Service Manager, head of desktop Services and Services Desk, I work with various team from CC located in Erfurt, Ratingen, Barcelona, Kuala Lumpur. After 7 years, unfortunately, the company were bought by BASF, so the last year, I was in charge of the integration for all topics related to Desktop Services and Service Desk During these 5 years, I spent my time in Germany (3 days by week) or in others countries (Turkey, China, UK, Spain, Italy) and it was an opportunity to have cross relationship with a lot of people.

Job done and with no more opportunities, in February 2012, I join Computacenter France. The job vacancy was to join an international team in charge of a new contract GE. After some interviews with Global Ops (Today CC International), my last interview was with Bernard. At the end, it was decided that I will join Computacenter not for GE but for GSK. Bernard was Service Manager on this account but customer wants to have a full time Service Manager.

During all this time, my goal was to increase the mark-up and keep high SLA. The fact was here and SLA was high and mark-up also. It was a win/win services for France.

Now, loop is closed!! After 2 months transition, I am now in charge as Service Manager for the French GE Team and again I am coming after Bernard to have this new challenge.

Pierre

Service Manager

FAST FACT

GE, the second largest U.S. company by market capitalisation, employs about 327,000 people and operates in more than 100 countries.

New Kid on the Block with Pierre Solomon

Back L to R: BaranYalcin, Richard Zecca, Mustafa Arslan and Chris Towell. Front: Atakan Cimen Right side: Riza Utku Batiralp

Pierre Solomon

GE NEWSLETTER | Issue 8 5

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Festivals are a living, dancing museum of cultures and traditions in an increasingly globalised world. There is no better place for travelers to understand a country than an event where it proudly celebrates its individuality, whether through music, camel races or monumental food fights.

Semana Santa, Location: Seville, Spain Sevilles carrera oficial (official route) begins on Calle Campana, follows Calle Sierpes to Plaza de San Francisco and then joins Avenida de la Constitucin to the cathedral. Dates: Easter week Easter week is a big deal across the Spanish-speaking world but, an ocean apart, its Antigua and Seville that celebrate it with the most gusto. In the Americas, Antigua really comes alive during Semana Santa, when the streets are covered in breathtakingly elaborate alfombras (carpets) of coloured sawdust and flower petals.

Holy Week, Location: Braga, Portugal A religious power base since the 6th century, Braga is known as the Rome of Portugal, so it should be no surprise that, like Seville and Antigua, it holds one of the worlds great Easter celebrations. To help drive out worldly thoughts during Holy Week, Gregorian chants are piped throughout the city centre, and at night streets are ablaze with makeshift

candlelit altars.

World Marbles Championships, Location: Tinsley Green , England You probably played marbles as a kid but did your parents ever tell you that if you knuckled down and worked on your tolleys you could be a world champion? The championships are held each year in the car park of this West

Sussex pub the Wembley of marbles.

Feria de Abril, Location: Seville, Spain

Two weeks after Semana Santa (the week leading up to Easter Sunday) A jolly postscript to sombre Semana Santa, the Feria de Abril is the biggest and most colourful of all Andalucas ferias (festivals). If

the name suggests pie bake-offs and apple bobbing, its misleading, for the Feria de Abril promises a week of full-blown partying.

Walpurgisnacht (Witches night) Location: Brocken, Germany What better way to see out April than on a mountain top in the company of witches and warlocks. According to local mythology, said witches and warlocks gather on Walpurgisnacht (which takes its name from Saint Walburga, whose feast day is 1 May) at locations throughout the Harz Mountains before flying off to 1142m Brocken on broomsticks or goats.

London Marathon Location: London, England As one of the six World Marathon Majors, the London Marathon has been attracting a world-class field of distance athletes for over three decades. On a spring day each April, up to 30,000 amateurs and pros push off from three points in and around Greenwich and pound out the largely flat course around the River Thames and past many of the city's landmarks before finishing in The Mall alongside St. James's Palace. If the weather's on song, London celebrates its Marathon like few other cities. Thousands of fancy dressed competitors add to the on-course entertainment. The participants are a generous bunch too, their fundraising efforts for the 2009 event raised over 47.2 million for charity and in the process landed the London Marathon in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest annual fund raising event in the world.

Kings Day Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands Birthday celebrations for queens are supposed to involve tea and polite conversation, but the Dutch like to give their qking a more rollicking party. This nationwide holiday honours king Willem-Alexander and in Amsterdam in particular its a crazy, wonderful madhouse celebration.

AROUND THE WORLD

Lost your marbles Dozens of marbles players from as far afield as the US and Algeria descend on the Greyhound Pub in Tinsley Green for the Good Friday Event

Happy Feet The Feria de Abril in Sevilla is one of the most popular celebrations in Spain where you can enjoy sevillanas, bullfights, flamenco music and dancers

Happy Birthday! If you want to see Amsterdam at its most festive, then head over at the end of April. You will not be disappointed.

FAST FACT

GE, the second largest U.S. company by market capitalisation, employs about 327,000 people and operates in more than 100 countries.

Around The World Where to go in April.

GE NEWSLETTER | Issue 8 6

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April 1, 2004 - The now ubiquitous Gmail service is launched as an invitation-only beta service. At first met with skepticism due to it being launched on April Fools Day, the ease of use and speed that Gmail offered for a web-based e-mail service quickly won converts. The fact that Gmail was invitation-only for a long time helped fueled a mystique that those who had a Gmail address were hip and uber-cool. Those of us who are actually hip and uber-cool didnt mind, of course, as those types of things dont bother hip and uber-cool people.

April 4, 1975 - Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates (above left), age 19, and Paul Allen, age 22, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The company is founded to develop BASIC for the MITS Altair 8800. MITS is headquartered in Albuquerque so Gates and Allen move there from Boston to launch their company. Eventually they decide to move Microsoft to the Seattle, Washington area, where both men were from originally and met in high school.

April 12, 1976 -Ronald Wayne, one of the three co-founders of Apple Computer, leaves the company just eleven days after it was three co-founders of Apple Computer, leaves the company just eleven days after it was

established, selling his ten percent share for $800. In his short time with the company, Wayne illustrated the first Apple logo, wrote the companys partnership agreement, and

wrote the manual for the Apple I. He chose to leave the company because the partnership agreement imposed unlimited personal liability on all three co-founders, regardless of which partner incurred the debt. Unlike Jobs and Wozniak, 21 and 25, Wayne had personal assets that potential creditors could seize. The failure of a slot machine company he had started five years earlier also contributed to his decision to exit the partnership. Wayne would later say that he either was going bankrupt or the richest man in the cemetery. By 1982, a ten percent share of Apple Computer was worth US$1.5 billion. And in 2010 it was worth $22 billion. They say hindsight is 20/20 or perhaps $22 billion?

April 15, 1892 - The General Electric Company (GE) is founded. It was formed by the merger of Edison General Electric (started by Thomas Edison in 1890) and the Thomson-Houston Electric Company. GE was one of the original 12 companies listed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and in 2010 was ranked by Forbes as the worlds second largest company.

April 20, 1998 - During the COMDEX Spring 98 and Windows World shows in Chicago, a public demonstration of the soon-to-be released Windows 98 goes awry when Bill Gates assistant causes the operating system to crash after plugging in a scanner. Instead of showing the plug-and-play capabilities they were trying to demonstrate, a Blue Screen of Death is visible by the entire audience which immediately erupts in laughter. After several seconds, Bill Gates famously responded, That must be why were not shipping Windows 98 yet.

April 23, 2005 - The first video uploaded to YouTube, Me at the zoo, is posted on April 23, 2005 at 8:27 PM by co-founder Jawed Karim. For now being a piece of history, the video is actually pretty dumb. Note to future entrepreneurs: what you do may be for posterity. Choose wisely.

April 27, 1981 - Xerox introduces the Xerox 8010 Star Information System, the first commercial system utilizing a computer mouse, among other now commonplace technologies. The 8010 was geared towards business and was not a commercial success, therefore the mouse remained in relative obscurity until the Apple Lisa, but more prominently the Apple Macintosh, brought the mouse into the mainstream.

FEEDBACK AND CONTRIBUTIONS

If you would like to give any feedback or contribute to any future editions of the newsletter, send an email to

GE.Communications@Computacenter.com

DID YOU KNOW?

The GE90-115B engine, manufactured by GE Aviation, generates 127,900 pounds of thrust. Thats more than the combined total horsepower of all the engines on the Titanic (46,000 pounds) and the Redstone rocket (76,000 pounds) that took the first American, Alan Shepard, to space. This earned the engine a spot in the Guinness World Records book.

Since 2002 GE has delivered more than 1,000 GE90 engines to Boeing the worlds most successful twin-engine, long-haul airplane.

Technology in April: A History By Andr Simm

You saved my life... Enabling users. Some great feedback for some fantastic service..

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