IBM

IBM offers a great deal of education in a shorter period of time than many companies. They are a process-driven firm, which helps individuals become familiar with their job role more quickly. They have moved to a pool environment in many areas, which provides structure to each of the technical teams.

The pool environment tends to limit exposure to other areas of technical interests. This also reduces the ability to focus on any given account or segment of the business, causing customer dissatisfaction. The processes documented do not address much more than the most common courses of action, which places some additional limitations on staff functionality.

Management has taken a more limiting view in technical services as they reduce the skills required to perform the work and become more reliant on documented processes. They further attempt to co-locate their staff in lower-wage areas where technical skills are lower. The reduction in skills in their pool environments places a higher workload on their Subject Matter Experts, which are becoming a rare breed in the company. The overall customer satisfaction suffers as a result of this model.