Posts Tagged ‘project management’

UC’s impact mostly hype?

If your organization isn’t thinking about unified communications, you may get that nagging feeling of being left behind in the latest communications technology promised to delivery positive business impact.

Well, don’t feel too bad now. InformationWeek surveyed a few hundred business technology professionals about UC’s impact, and the results are enough to rain on any UC parade:

The buzz around enterprise unified communications is loud, and getting more so as IT spending loosens. The problem is, in our experience and confirmed by our InformationWeek Analytics 2010 Unified Communications Survey of 406 business technology professionals, enterprise-wide UC programs that have a truly transformative impact on business processes are all too rare.

For example, videoconferencing has lately hogged the spotlight. But too often we see IT groups set up expensive video systems and walk away, with nary an hour of training or any plan to track whether employees even use the tool. From the CFO’s perspective, consumer-class applications, such as Skype and Yahoo Messenger, seem to provide much the same benefit as enterprise-class systems, without all the hassle and expense. No wonder we’re faced with frustration, misunderstandings, and elusive ROI.

Does this remind you of anything? Say, back in the days when CRM was taking off and was the buzzword in almost all business technology articles?

In the glory days of PeopleSoft and Siebel, there seemed no end to their high-flying potential. They hired almost anyone out of college who could be molded into a business/technical consultant. They signed on customer upon customer whose CTO drank the Kool-Aid and was sold on CRM’s transformative powers. The promise of cost savings, business processes re-engineered, and happy executives. Seemed like a no-brainer!

But as we all know, many of these CRM implementations failed miserably. Over time and over budget. Litigations ensued. In fact, there’s been stories of how failed CRM projects broke companies.

UC adopters: may past CRM projects serve as lessons for you. Like CRM vendors, UC vendors will promise the moon. It’s best for you to stay grounded in evaluating UC’s benefits for the organization. Executives are especially vulnerable these days because of the economic downturn, and vendors will certainly exploit that.

If you follow closely the developments in UC, you need to read the whole article.

See you at ACCE New Orleans

I will provide coverage of ICMI’s ACCE Conference & Expo in New Orleans next week, bringing you the latest news and trends in contact center management. Already on the conference agenda are lots of sessions about social media, so that’s definitely on the minds of many management staff. I’m also looking forward to the keynotes, especially from John Foley, a former top pilot of the Blue Angels and now motivational speaker/businessman.

The one thing that may come up in conversations is the Gulf oil spill which has hit the state hard, and starting to have an impact on the neighboring Gulf coast states. I have read reports that some New Orleans residents have complained about a mysterious odor, but no official word on the origin. Of course, many people suspect the odor comes from the spill. At any rate, Louisiana needs our help in cleaning its shores and beaches and saving the precious wildlife from this environmental crisis. There are many ways to help, one being the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana which is a local non-profit organization that’s been dedicated to the cause since 1985.

Have a great weekend and see you in New Orleans!

Countdown to ACCE in New Orleans!

As we all know it takes more than technology to excel in operating a contact center. That is why I’ve decided to attend the ACCE Conference and Expo next week in New Orleans. This conference is all about contact center management, from human resources to knowledge to performance. There will be vendors in analytics, measurement, workforce management, and more. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of focus on social media this year as well, and I definitely look forward in learning about how contact center managers are (or will be) utilizing social media to improve their center’s effectiveness.

If you will be there too please don’t hesitate to contact me so we can meet up.

Marin County v. Deloitte

There is a lawsuit that is attracting a lot of attention among the tech systems integrators and their customers. In County of Marin v. Deloitte Consulting LLP, the County alleges fraud on part of Deloitte for misrepresenting their team resources as experienced professionals and/or experts in the SAP Public Sector implementation. The County even goes as far to say that Deloitte used this contract to provide on-the-job training for some team members. Deloitte was hired in 2005 and after all these years the ERP system is still a mess, according to the lawsuit.

Deloitte fired back with a claim alleging “breach of agreement and unpaid invoices.”

Michael Krigsman has a good writeup on ZDnet. Here’s my take stemming from my own CTI project experiences…

Integrators LOVE public sector projects

Government and municipal customers are often considered the cash cows for systems integrators and vendors. Lots of milking and lots of expensive CYA. The truth is, a public sector customer is often overstaffed, bureaucratic, and loaded with taxpayer money (okay, maybe not with the recent economic turmoil). It gets even worse if there are union workers involved. Sadly that is just the nature of government. Vendors realize this and will certainly exploit it to maximize profit and margins.

Because of the inefficient nature of government, it will take more dollars to get things done. That’s just the way it is. For each layer of management approval required for project changes, dollars are going down the drain. For each hour that’s required for reviews by everyone and their bosses, and as hours turn into days with no decision in sight, money is being thrown out the window. Public sector employees are also very risk-averse and resistant to change. They prefer to avoid accountability for fear of embarrassment, but usually when something bad happens they will just pour more money into the problem rather than admit fault.

That’s perfectly fine with SIs. In fact, SIs count on it.

I’m willing to bet that Marin County never really took control of the project. I bet the County just wanted to hire somebody to take care of everything, i.e. pay somebody (Deloitte) to make the problem (the SAP project) go away.

It cannot work that way. The customer has a duty to keep SIs on their toes. I’m not saying to constantly ask for status meetings or watch over their shoulders, but to convey the expectation that all parties will be accountable for their end of the deal.

Even better, the public sector customer can disrupt the stereotype by being flexible and open to accept better processes, new organizational changes, and being a good steward of taxpayer money. That ought to shock the integrator.

Technical complexity requires simplifying everything else

The more complex the system, the better it is to streamline and simplify everything around it. That means cut down on paperwork, flatten the team organization, and streamline the processes.

Who wants to deal with a five-day waiting period before a firewall port can be opened? Who wants to get that phone call from AP about a missing $1 receipt for that Coke you got at the vending machine? Is it really necessary to ask for VP-level approval for taking just a few days off?

Having to deal with crap (yes, that’s a technical term) like that only puts additional burden onto the team which I’m sure is already inundated with technical challenges and deadlines.

Technical ability doesn’t guarantee success, integrity does

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you’re thinking: Eugene is high on crack. But I firmly believe that many issues and problems facing troubled IT projects are results of dishonesty and unethical behavior, applicable to both the SI and the customer.

Technical problems are almost always solvable in today’s environment. Perhaps it’ll take some more time and money and manpower, but it shall not hinder the ultimate success of the project.

Big SIs will lie to make more money; small SIs will lie to survive. It’s that simple. If you work for an SI then you should do everything in your power to maintain your professionalism and integrity. It will pay off in your long term career.

What gets the project in trouble and pushes it to the edge of failure? Dishonesty about team resources, dishonesty about expenses, dishonesty about existing IT systems, dishonesty about payments, etc.

Closely watched lawsuit

The outcome of this lawsuit could have far reaching effects. Just think of the number of IT projects that aren’t deemed a success. Add on to the fact that many SIs today rely on outsourced resources (some even offshore) which definitely complicates matters.

What’s your take on this litigation?

Is skill-based routing overrated?

The world is a happy place with traditional queue-based routing. Telecom administrators can set up queues on the PBX easily — blindfolded, standing on one leg, with one arm tied to the back. Contact center managers can precisely illustrate what they expect in regards to queue-based routing… A queue for premier customers, a queue for Spanish-speaking customers, a queue for late payments, etc. Everything in the contact center is in harmony.

Then somebody had the idea to throw a wrench into the whole deal: skill-based routing. Don’t think about your agents as members of a queue (or queues), but instead think of all the skills they have to serve the customer. Ah, ingenious! And so customer focused!

But here’s the problem. Many PBX administrators and contact center managers simply have a hard time wrapping their heads around SBR. QBR is so ingrained in their lives that anything straying from queues will cause confusion. And if not confusion, obfuscation. That is, their attempt at QBR-to-SBR transformation often results in a implementation and maintenance disaster.

Traditionally, there’s a license fee associated with a PBX queue. It’s like any other phone extension, except having different characteristics. So consequently contact center managers understand not to go crazy with queues.

But with the newer PBXs and contact center servers supporting SBR, these managers found out that there’s hardly a limit on the number of skills. They can set up hundreds and hundreds of skills (hey, it’s a big enterprise!) with ease and have fun assigning them to agents. In fact, it’s so easy that I’ve found in my previous projects that some supervisors will change agent skills on a daily basis. (So today this agent has the Spanish skill but tomorrow she won’t.)

Plus, it’s quite often that they will not let go of queues. They want to keep the queues for overflows or as a catch-all bucket to dump calls, i.e. if a caller is holding too long in SBR go ahead and dump the call into a queue. The caller probably wouldn’t enjoy that experience any more than having remained waiting for a skilled agent. Essentially, the contact center now becomes a mixed QBR and SBR implementation. That translates to more effort in terms of design, deployment, testing, maintenance, and troubleshooting.

If SBR is in your future then by all means totally commit to it and learn to forget about queues, even to handle overflows and catch-alls. Invest in a virtual hold or callback integration instead of resorting back to QBR. In the planning and design phase, also bring out the agent training materials to grasp a better idea of what constitutes an agent skill. Go through a few iterations to define skills until you’ve got a set of skills that’s manageable and easily maintainable down the road.

And if you’re just satisfied with good ol’ QBR? Well, there’s no rush to join the SBR crowd. According to a friend who works at a major telecom company which also offers managed hosted (cloud) services for contact center infrastructure, he hasn’t seen one customer using skill-based routing…