Customer Management System
There are tons of systems out there trying to improve business processes of utility companies in general or electric companies in specific.
The key is still doing the re-engineering process well and the application system will just a tool to follow the processes. I put some of my thoughts about Electric Management System in this blog. Feel free to read and comment.
Working in the project requires me to travel into some countries. Calling to my family or offices abroad becoming my daily routines. To reduce the cost of calling abroad, I make use of Internet Phone Service. There are many providers out there that can give you good rate for Long Distance Phone Rates. However, make sure that you have good internet connection. Otherwise, your calls will be delayed. It is very disturbing especially when you make a business call.
One thing that put in my mind when choosing a provider for internet phone is the capability to store my phone book online. This way, I can make a phone call from any computers by just signing in into the software and all my phone book are displayed. It is a good back up for my contact numbers online as well. Another aspect for consideration is if the provider has Unlimited Long Distance Calling Plan. I used to call my families often. I might say daily. Thus, an unlimited calling plan helps me a lot in saving my calling costs.
Try to search around regarding providers that suit your needs. If you are using internet phone in the office, try to check out if the software is allowed by your admin. Some softwares will not pass the proxy server set by your admin.
As mentioned in my previous post regarding the importance of external communications in implementing new billing system, project management should take the campaigns of external communications seriously.
One way to launch external communication campaigns is through website. Project management should choose the web hosting company to put all web sites files. Sounds difficult to choice a right webhosting company? Not anymore because you can go to webhostingchoice.com to search for available hosting companies with their alternative plans and prices.
You can input the search criteria either by prices, spaces, bandwidth, etc to find the right hosting companies that will fit your needs. If you are still new to web hosting features and capabilities, make sure that you visit FAQ section to understand further about what web hosting are. You can read different types of web hosting with their advantages and disadvantages.
Take note to observe their up time because you want your website for external communications to be up most of the time. However, even though expensive web hosts offer you more functionalities and support, cheaper web host does not necessary offer "cheap" functionalities and supports.
Communication in project management are mostly relied on email exchanges. Data are passed as well trough email communications. Email accounts should be able to be accessed and downloaded using Email application in laptop so that the emails can be read even though the project team members are off line.
To minimize the cost of having reliable email server, project management can look for hosted exchange available online. The cost of having email server will be reduced without sacrificing the quality and the security of our emails data. Make sure you find the service that offer exchange hosting with latest technology like hosted exchange 2007 and provide you money back guarantee to test their services and reliabilities.
Additional features that can synchronize with Blackberry or Windows mobile device can be something to think of if you have your project members always mobile and owning these devices. If data integrity and security are concerning you the most, try to ask them to explain how they secure the data that will not be able to be accessed by unauthorized people. If you do not understand their explanation, post in on IT forum so that other people can verify the security.
It is normal for a project documentation to have a tons of documentation. Each phase of the project often mark by documentation deliverables. Not to mention all the minutes of the meetings that needs to be documented. Due to high quantity of the documentations, proper documentation management is required. However, hard copy documentation management is not anymore a trend in project implementation. Most of the consultants and project managers are mobile, thus, most of the informations should be shared online. This is where a proper online project documentation is needed.
A project usually started online project documentation using an intranet within the organization. This way, all members in the intranet network could share the resources that were organized properly. The problem is that if the internet could not be accessed online from outside the office or network. This will be useless as project managers and most of the consultants are mobile.
UK based company created an innovation to offer Small Business Intranet UK. A web based intranet solution that allow all defined members to access the folders based on the privilege that have been set. You will be able to access your files remotely from home with the secured connection to protect all your project documentations. Small Business Intranet UK offers a 30 day free trial so that you can make sure if the customizable solutions fit your online project documentation management. Project manager can ensure to monitor all day to day activities with ease even if he/she is traveling.
Even if during first step of the project all responsibilities have been defined for both parties (client and vendor), there will be new areas or work that need to be done and monitored. These new tasks should be make clear who are the entity that will be responsible.
It is important that during monthly meeting, these new responsibilities were declared to avoid misunderstanding in future. A chart displaying new tasks and responsibilities will be helpful.
This process should be repeated every time new tasks appear on the duration of the project implementation. It is better to anticipate and make every thing clear in term of responsibilities. Avoid blaming each other when the tasks are going wrong. You will not benefit anything from blaming other party. Instead, learn from the mistake and strategize better for the next phase.
One way of Project Management Tracking and Control is using Communication Management. What are the purpose of communication management? It will:
• Identify and describe all project stakeholders
• Describe the communication needs of the project stakeholders
• Define how project stakeholders will be kept informed about the project
• Identify the communication paths within the project structure
• Ensure all information is consistent, accurate, and timely
• Common project communication methods include status reporting, correspondence, meetings, and formal presentations.
And what the methods for communication management?
• Project Status Documents
• Project Planning and Control Documents
• Inter-Office/Inter-Project Communication
• E-mail
• Meeting
• Presentations
For effective tracking and control of project management using communication management, all project audiences should be defined with their roles and responsibilities.
Then, the communication matrix should be developed to identify activities, who should receive the communication (audiences), method of communications, and suggested time frame. Example Below can be seen for the communication matrix:
Using simple communication matrix, the project can be easily controlled and tracked. Any deviations should be detected as early as possible for faster resolutions. This as to avoid the problems or hindrances grow and affect other activities of the project.
I think this is not a secret anymore that communication is important in project management. In my blog post now, I would like to discuss the media of communication. I am not going to talk about the communication strategy. But as simple as the media itself and how to reduce the cost for communication.
Maybe some of you have been using internet phone to reduce the communication cost, but this can be done (of course) if only you have the internet connection. Most of the time in the project, you are mobile and you do not have internet connection in most of the area. That is why I am going to discuss about global phone card.
One company that offer the services is Pingo. With this virtual card, you can save your international call up to 90%. And what I like most is that they are plain and simple. No hidden costs. I used other company before and I was shocked when the credits run out so fast. After some queries, I found out that there are additional fees that were not mentioned in their home page before. I just found out in some small fonts appeared in the long agreement statements.
Well, If you think that I exaggerate things, you can try it yourself for the international calling card and get 5 hours of free International calls during your sign up. You can put also a coupon code “ppp3” to get $3 rebate from Pingo. In total, you get $25 worth of calls for just $17.
Communicating with external audiences is essential for the success of any organization, in businesses, governments or non-profit organizations. Increasingly, companies succeed or fail depending on their public perception.
The main objective of external communication is to inform all organizations about implementation of the new Customer management system within COMPANY. The main objective of the presentation is to improve the external image of the organization. External communication is related mostly to the different types of customers (residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural) and/or communication with collection points (banks, on-line and off-line payment points). It is important to inform customers of the new services provided in commercial offices, and of new telephone numbers, etc.
Mission of External communication:
Transferring to different audiences the basic messages, corporate values and the administration style represented in the brand image that COMPANY wants to transmit continuously.
Receivers of the information:
- Customers (residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, etc.)
- Suppliers (of equipment, products, services, etc.)
- Public organizations and other institutions
Problems of external communication:
The problems related to external communication can be classified into the following groups:
• Information for customers – customers do not have any information or very limited information about the changes. Customers do not know why the Company is doing the changes and how the changes would affect them.
• Information for collection points – the collection points have not sufficient information on how the changes can affect the collection processes which may lead to problems and misunderstandings.
• The information is not distributed before the implementation – Customers or collection points obtain the information when the system is already implemented.
How to solve the problems:
• Preparing the information campaign related to different types of customers (impacts or changes) and explaining with details or examples what concretely is going to be changed and how a new process should be done.
• Preparing the information for collection points including explanations of the communication changes (collaboration).
• Preparing the campaign or other material before the system implementation.
• These kind of preparations can be sub-contracted to any business consulting companies.
Implementing a project as large as Customer Management System (CMS), communication becomes a key factor for its success. Thus COMPANY’s customers, suppliers and staff must understand that all the activities of the CMS are focused on achieving the continuity of COMPANY as a company, which is competent, stable and profitable.
To accomplish this, COMPANY staff, customers and suppliers need to be fully aware of the switch from the old systems to the new ones.
Considering the implementation of a new CMS, it is necessary to elaborate material for internal and external communication purposes. This material features some problems that could arise during the transitional change in the Company, as well as offering several solutions. Even though the proposed solutions do not cover the whole spectrum of the problems, these could be regarded as an initial impulse of inspiration.
COMPANY has determined to carry out a change of its internal structures. The implementation of any information system means significant changes in the whole organization or in certain organizational units. The CMS implementation is special because it addresses both internal and external changes. Internal changes refer to the organization’s staff and external changes are related to different types of COMPANY customers.
Basically, the CMS implementation is not free of distrust (internal and external). The reasons could be the following:
• Company’s staff has no information about the implementation of the system or has only limited information that is not enough for a proper understanding.
• Staff dislikes new technologies (this is related to job positions where people are not used to work with computers or where the use of computers is limited
• Customers have no information of what the strategy of the Company is, why the Company is implementing a new system and how this implementation is going to affect them.
Therefore, from the beginning of the implementation of the CMS, it is very important to do activities in order to overcome all these hurdles. The staff has to grasp what the expected changes are about. The most useful way to persuade them is communication, “We can desire and accept only what we understand“.
The staff has no information about “Why” or “Whom” are these changes for? How will the Company be in future? What organization structure will it have? What will be the philosophy of the Company? These are the reasons to create an effective communication plan, focused on an accurate transmission of information to managers and employees. Firstly, it is necessary to communicate the basic ideas of the project, inputs and outputs that are expected to be made straightforwardly and at the appropriate time.
