P1 and Green Packet release a case study that even their own people don’t want to read

Update: We downloaded the case study again to see if Green Packet rectified the error and they did. At the same time, we got a comment from a person claiming to be the Marketing Director of Green Packet, Carol Koh explaining how the major mix up happened. We can verify on the authenticity of the person behind the comment but check revealed that there is indeed a Carol Koh in Green Packet and she is the Marketing Director of the company. Below is the comment in verbatim:

Hi, I’m the Marketing Director of Greenpacket Solutions. We do take these things seriously, so thank you for pointing out this human error on the design & layout stage, which would otherwise undermine the case study. The pain and anxiety the team is feeling right now is punishment enough. The team had been forgiven after they promised to never make the same mistake again.

Miss Koh claims that the version of the case study in which we spotted the grave error was a “design & layout stage” version. If that was indeed the case, it shouldn’t be made available for download in the first place. In fact the, “design & layout stage” version has been on Green Packet’s website for public download since January 31, 2011.

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A case study is a tremendously important piece of work. It is a highly detailed document providing in-depth investigation findings on a subject. Organisations use it to establish credibility, to showcase how effective a product has been in a certain application. Generally, it is a document that tells its readers “hey so and so is good and we’ve got the findings to back it up”.

In P1’s and Green Packet’s case, a case study is a demonstration of how they can’t even be bothered to read their own material.

P1 and it’s parent company recently released a case study entitled “P1 4G staying one step ahead” and it talks about how P1 is a “successful” 4G operator and how Green Packet has been instrumental in making P1 a success.

Although we don’t agree with the contents of the case study, both P1 and Green Packet have their justifications, but that’s not the interesting part. If you go through the document available for download here, you will notice that there is a glaring and terribly embarrassing mistake.

There are two quote boxes in the article highlighting two different high level persons in the P1 organization, one the CEO, Micheal Lai and the other Ti Lian Seng, the VP of Technology. The funny thing is both are saying exactly the same thing.

How did this happen? We don’t know but by our reckoning it is conceivable that neither Mr. Lai and Mr. Ti had even read their respective quotes before the call was made to publish the case study, and to us that tells you so much more about both company than any case study ever can.