Tech support firm gains on Olympics arena

Updated: 2008-10-15 10:38

The great success of the Beijing Olympics lies not only in the record number of gold medals China won, but also in the collaboration of many people, including volunteers, sponsors, suppliers, and security staff.

The 1988 Seoul Olympics stimulated Korean economy, and world-class enterprises like Samsung thus entered the global business community afterwards. Likewise, Beijing Olympics also created the fantastic stage for strong local players like Novots Technologies.

Novots is famous IT outsourcing service and shouldered part of Lenovo's tech supporting task.

Lenovo has three types of tech support teams: site engineers, senior engineers and experts. Fu Jun and his colleagues in Novots worked as the experts who are responsible for the last firewall of the tech support. By the end of April this year, the team had been well prepared for the task. Fu and his colleagues at Novots had to get familiar with all the equipments on the Lenovo's product line, as they needed to check all the equipments in each stadium and made sure that all had been arranged in a standard way. Once the problem is detected, the correction shall be done soon.

Fu said that all equipment had been operating smoothly during the Games. On the one hand, Lenovo's products have stable quality; on the other hand, the whole support system has warning procedures which enables technicians to find out problems in advance and solve them immediately.

On the day of the Olympics closing ceremony, when the last project was done, tens of thousands of IT workers from different companies and departments gathered in front of Digital Beijing Building, applauding, to celebrate the success. Many even cried.

As a member of the IT support team, Fu said:"It is rare for so many elites and organizations to be united and learn from each other and share the common responsibility." He said he could not help bursting into tears when many regards and congratulations from the bosses, colleagues and other partners pouring into his email box.

No Triviality during the Olympics

Zhang Lei, also from Novots, witnessed the Olympics in another way. He and several colleagues offered IT service for NBC during the Olympics. For ten years, NBC has been rights-holding broadcasters in the North America.

"It is a rare opportunity for both companies to join in this great party. Novots is lucky to have the chance to serve NBC."

Starting from August 2, Zhang and his colleagues began to offer 7*24 IT service in five shifts, which are overlapped so as to guarantee the continuity and reaction in case of emergencies.

However, things unexpected always happen. In the process of the Olympics, one doctor from NBC delegation needed synchronous data from his American colleagues so as to diagnose some patients, since the files at hand were not enough for the solution.

But the doctor found that he could not use his email any more and then he asked Zhang Lei for help. Zhang found that the doctor's email box is full. However, the doctor refused to delete existing emails to make room for the new one. And the doctor did not carry his computer or a portable hard disk with him, therefore he could not download the file and keep it.

After communications, Zhang managed to get a portable hard disk and download some emails onto it. Then he burned the content into a compact disk. Thus the problem was solved and the patient was cured in time.

"There is no triviality during the Olympics." Zhang stressed.

Besides the Lenovo and NBC projects, Novots also work for Kodak during the Olympics, according to Tian Haisha, vice manager of Novots.

He added that as a partner of Lenovo, his company is also responsible for purchasing the emergency equipments for Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee.

"Through serving the Olympics, our company become more confident and we proved that we have the ability to work with world-class enterprises like NBC.This is a big return for us."

"Compared to proving the company's ability, the rare opportunity offered to employees was more important. Although Novots has worked with many multinational companies and joined some international projects, the Olympics has quite different meanings," Tian said.

"Some members felt so proud to be selected into the Olympics project since they could not only learn from the big companies so closely but also could improve their language skills as well, " he added.

"Our project mangers have strengthened themselves and can learn the overall systematic management through the whole project," he said.

Another finding by Zhang is that foreign clients focus more on teamwork."The customers can be satifided only if your team is united," he said.

Tian is confident about Novots' future. "With the good exposure of our company image and clients' broadcasting, we will definitely get more orders from international tycoons."