Challenge 

 I am working in a Multi - national IT company as a Sales Manager dealing with various kinds of   organizations ( or customers ) in diverse industries . I came across this Manufacturing company who is   looking to address an IT issue affecting the business : ERP System Performance . While this is a normal or   typical challenge in organizations having old or what we call “ for refresh ” systems , I dug deeper into   customer ’s IT department and uncovered a few more issues they have not realized they have . The   primary challenge is ERP System performance , and so we started the conversation on how we address   the similar challenge among our other customers . 

 Selection 

 In my work , I always choose the path of “ Solution Selling ” . As I see this as the most effective way to gain   trust of customers , and ultimately address all issues , whether current or near future which in turn   translates to business revenue . In Solution Selling approach , one of the most commonly used tool   ( which I use always ) is Visualization , or Visual Thinking , or sometimes simply called Whiteboarding   session . Visualization is a tool where each areas of a problem within an organization is laid out , and   encourages all stakeholders to contribute to the visuals to form a more meaningful , information - rich   display to easily identify solutions . It also shows different views of each stakeholders , and how each can   easily understand a common way in addressing the challenge . I selected this tool easily because I   noticed the stakeholders in this Manufacturing company is more active and participative in powerpoint   slides ( when I went there the first time to do an overview pitch , prior to knowing their issues ) . I started   getting to know whiteboarding a few years ago via an article / video from Tom Fanelli which is until now I   still use his tips in all of my whiteboarding activities with customers . 

 Link : http://www.tomfanelli.com/how-to-whiteboard-5-simple-whiteboard-techniques/ 

 Application 

 So after I learned about their ERP System Performance issues , I went back to them and invited the IT   team including the CIO , to do what I call “ Mind Sharing ” . I use this term to invite them for an hour or   two of sharing best practices of similar IT pain points . But before any sharing happens , I pull up a   whiteboard and start outlining and digging deep on the organization ’s operations starting from IT , the   known challenge ( which is system performance issue ) and went on to get to know their 3 - year business   plan and what are the things they are planning to do to help on the 3 - year plan initiative of the   management . I started lining up on the left side , the challenges they know now , and on the right side of   the board are the identified plans of the organization . Then I started connecting the challenges to the   plans and how they hinder those plans , and listed in the top , their identified initiatives and how they can   address or help on achieving any / all of the plans listed on the right . After that I started drawing options   in the middle part of the board , in this case I am now “ sharing ” what was done by other companies with   similar challenges or plans , and how it is fit in their own setup . This created an image summary of most   of the necessary things they have in mind that they have not documented . This resulted in a much   clearer view of the gaps and tasks at hand and where they are as of that moment in achieving the goals . 

 Insight 

 The challenges they faced historically maintaining their systems were key to come up with solution   options . One that was stand out was , previously when the server went down unexpectedly and the ERP   was not accessible , the vendor who supplied the system before spent 6 hours just to pin point the root   cause and make the system back up and running . The cause of delay was that the software vendor and   the hardware vendor were pointing at each other as to where the issue happened and therefore these   two suppliers were saying that the other has to fix the issue and vice versa . During the visualization   session , all agreed that there has to be a simplified approach to avoid this scenario and therefore   concluded that one solution is to get both the software and the hardware from a single vendor / brand .   This approach led to the company savings of about $ 60,000 USD annually migrating from the old   virtualization software to the “ single vendor approach ” unified brand of software and hardware which   includes virtualization software . It was pointed out during visualization session that since they only have   a handful of IT personnel , plus the group has limited budget annually for IT initiatives , the approach to a   “ single vendor system ” will greatly benefit not just IT but the business as a whole . This approach   resulted to reduced deployment from 30 days to 3 days , and the company was able to allocate more   funding to other initiatives such as Disaster Recovery deployment with the savings they got from this   initiative . 

 Approach 

 While the visualization tool approach worked in this scenario , I think if we have also used Learning   Launch tool together with Visualization , we could ’ve strengthen the justification to the project which   may also result to faster order from customer . With visualization tool alone , we have spent 3 months   before we got the customer buy in and the actual order ( we spent two additional weeks convincing the   customer that the new solution proposed works ) and I feel that if we have done a Proof of Concept or   an equivalent of Learning Launch , we could ’ve lessen the sales cycle to less than 2 months . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Challenge 

 I am working in a Multi - national IT company as a Sales Manager dealing with various kinds of   organizations ( or customers ) in diverse industries . I came across this Manufacturing company who is   looking to address an IT issue affecting the business : ERP System Performance . While this is a normal or   typical challenge in organizations having old or what we call “ for refresh ” systems , I dug deeper into   customer ’s IT department and uncovered a few more issues they have not realized they have . The   primary challenge is ERP System performance , and so we started the conversation on how we address   the similar challenge among our other customers . 

 Selection 

 In my work , I always choose the path of “ Solution Selling ” . As I see this as the most effective way to gain   trust of customers , and ultimately address all issues , whether current or near future which in turn   translates to business revenue . In Solution Selling approach , one of the most commonly used tool   ( which I use always ) is Visualization , or Visual Thinking , or sometimes simply called Whiteboarding   session . Visualization is a tool where each areas of a problem within an organization is laid out , and   encourages all stakeholders to contribute to the visuals to form a more meaningful , information - rich   display to easily identify solutions . It also shows different views of each stakeholders , and how each can   easily understand a common way in addressing the challenge . I selected this tool easily because I   noticed the stakeholders in this Manufacturing company is more active and participative in powerpoint   slides ( when I went there the first time to do an overview pitch , prior to knowing their issues ) . I started   getting to know whiteboarding a few years ago via an article / video from Tom Fanelli which is until now I   still use his tips in all of my whiteboarding activities with customers . 

 Link : http://www.tomfanelli.com/how-to-whiteboard-5-simple-whiteboard-techniques/ 

 Application 

 So after I learned about their ERP System Performance issues , I went back to them and invited the IT   team including the CIO , to do what I call “ Mind Sharing ” . I use this term to invite them for an hour or   two of sharing best practices of similar IT pain points . But before any sharing happens , I pull up a   whiteboard and start outlining and digging deep on the organization ’s operations starting from IT , the   known challenge ( which is system performance issue ) and went on to get to know their 3 - year business   plan and what are the things they are planning to do to help on the 3 - year plan initiative of the   management . I started lining up on the left side , the challenges they know now , and on the right side of   the board are the identified plans of the organization . Then I started connecting the challenges to the   plans and how they hinder those plans , and listed in the top , their identified initiatives and how they can   address or help on achieving any / all of the plans listed on the right . After that I started drawing options   in the middle part of the board , in this case I am now “ sharing ” what was done by other companies with   similar challenges or plans , and how it is fit in their own setup . This created an image summary of most   of the necessary things they have in mind that they have not documented . This resulted in a much   clearer view of the gaps and tasks at hand and where they are as of that moment in achieving the goals . 

 Insight 

 The challenges they faced historically maintaining their systems were key to come up with solution   options . One that was stand out was , previously when the server went down unexpectedly and the ERP   was not accessible , the vendor who supplied the system before spent 6 hours just to pin point the root   cause and make the system back up and running . The cause of delay was that the software vendor and   the hardware vendor were pointing at each other as to where the issue happened and therefore these   two suppliers were saying that the other has to fix the issue and vice versa . During the visualization   session , all agreed that there has to be a simplified approach to avoid this scenario and therefore   concluded that one solution is to get both the software and the hardware from a single vendor / brand .   This approach led to the company savings of about $ 60,000 USD annually migrating from the old   virtualization software to the “ single vendor approach ” unified brand of software and hardware which   includes virtualization software . It was pointed out during visualization session that since they only have   a handful of IT personnel , plus the group has limited budget annually for IT initiatives , the approach to a   “ single vendor system ” will greatly benefit not just IT but the business as a whole . This approach   resulted to reduced deployment from 30 days to 3 days , and the company was able to allocate more   funding to other initiatives such as Disaster Recovery deployment with the savings they got from this   initiative . 

 Approach 

 While the visualization tool approach worked in this scenario , I think if we have also used Learning   Launch tool together with Visualization , we could ’ve strengthen the justification to the project which   may also result to faster order from customer . With visualization tool alone , we have spent 3 months   before we got the customer buy in and the actual order ( we spent two additional weeks convincing the   customer that the new solution proposed works ) and I feel that if we have done a Proof of Concept or   an equivalent of Learning Launch , we could ’ve lessen the sales cycle to less than 2 months .
### Output: 