Leveredge Project_VFinal Jul. 2016 | Page 27

Courtesy of Rovie Rizqia Qudus (I’m) Possible Achievement "Cycling in Mount Bromo" >> Agus Suryono P ratesis has been around in Indonesia since 1987, working with many huge companies as their IT solutions. Leveredge Project Journey is one of the countless projects Pratesis had tackled, but it was different from many others. It is Unilever Global’s most ambitious project, encompassing Sabang to Merauke, the borders of Indonesia. As the largest island country in the world, Indonesia is made up from 13.000 small islands and its land as whole is mapped to be around 1.900.000 km2. Along the roads (and the sea), there were 858 PT. Unilever Indonesia Tbk distributors which we needed to visit and train. The gravity of this project still induced minor hyperventilation to me. We needed a team of more than 150 people to do this project succesfully. A total of 156 implementors, 3 trainer leads, and 2 project secretaries made everything possible. A lot of things needed to be factored in; including place to stay, cultural differences, transportations, and unexpected natural disturbances. Since some of the places were so isolated, we needed to make arrangements with the distributors there to provide a temporary house for our implementors. It’s not rare for the implementors to not have found rental houses once they get there. Even after so many hurdles, however, the project turned out to be a resounding success. Waves after waves of implementors came home with good news, and we came to know how to handle the little hiccups of the road. We assigned our most patient implementors to the east area of Indonesia, whereas those with more temper in the more populated locations in Java. We came to know our personalities and spectrum of knowledge, and most of all, we learned how to work as a unified team. With the project ending, we could finally take one big breath and exhale all the tension present during the whole 18 months of the operation. Not only we came home with new knowledge, we also came closer to know more about our country, and learn firsthand about the cultural richness of Indonesia. ••• the colors of pratesis / I / JULY 2016 # 27