How do you present the Proposal in Customer Language

Disclaimer: I have been writing the blogs in the style of story telling based on real incidents but with some fiction added to emphasize the message. Hence I request not to make any conclusions to derive facts based on the posts in these blogs. 

I made many business development sessions and one of the challenges was to convince the Customer on why their organization must go for a ERP, a BI Solution or even an upgrade to better version. In a typical Presales mode, I used to present what are all the great features the software has and believed the customer would be convinced for sure.

I was doing a similar presentation to a matured Customer who is in top 10 of the Fortune 100 Conglomerates. The customer Organization was known to be the process oriented and organization full of knowledgeable stakeholders. My first challenge was there when the customer stopped my presentation and asked me a simple question.

Why should I upgrade my current ERP to the latest version? I just want the answer to this and I can convince my leadership for the rest.

I politely responded that this was exactly what I was trying to do through explaining the great features that are added to the new version

He said “we can hear this from any consulting organization. And in fact, I can go through the literature of this Product vendor in their web site to understand what are all new in the Software.”

I was confused. “Dear X, You will be having more user friendly screens, parameter based navigations, new functionalities to support some of your activities for which you might be doing customizations. They are all going to make your life much better”

“At what cost?” Now he came to the point.

“It costs …. USD but I am sure that helps you a lot”

‘This is English, can I have another session where you will explain me on what will be my investment and what will be my cost or Productivity benefits if I make this migration?”

“Sure Mr. X. I will come back next week”

“Thanks! But please remember. I don’t want any English text detailing the benefits in terms of excellent features, great performance, superb reports etc. I want to know the numbers against each of what you say as the benefit. And preferably in terms of dollars”Completely puzzled about what to present in the next week, I met Bholerao and explained the scenario.

“Dear Khaderao, let me give an example. I agree any model of BMW car has great features but it also costs a lot. If my job is to buy vegetables every day and carry them home,  will I buy BMW?”

Your customer is asking the same question. You need to understand what is the line of business for the customer, what are the major business transactions that they do. What is the volume of transactions. What are their major 3 pain areas that they don’t fulfill currently?

These are a few questions to which you must have the answer.

I asked ‘how do I get there? Can you please clarify?’

“Hmm. Ok, let me try. There are two approaches for you”

Approach 1:

1.       Understand the current business

2.       Identify the features that are already in use and the new features will help the customer at a Macro level

3.       Approximate the benefits to the customer when the features are adopted. This is to be done based on customer’s business metrics (CTQ) and the expected cost savings, increase of revenue, reduction of effort, space or speed up of business such as quick delivery

4.       Compute the fixed benefits as well as recurring benefits based on the analysis

5.       Compare the with fixed and recurring investments made by the customer

6.       The cost is not just licenses or the service costs of implementation / upgrade. They include:

a.       Purchase of Infra such as Hardware, upgrades of OS, Database, additional disk space etc

b.      Any Network costs or upgrade costs

c.       Recurring costs such as hiring new staff for maintenance. Examples are like Administrators, DBAs, Domain specialists

d.      The cost of business leaders involving in the Implementation / upgrade and the opportunity loss due to their reduced involvement in the Business

e.      Others

7.       Submit the substantial benefits in numbers to justify the upgrade / implementation

Approach 2;

1.       If you cant justify what is the business benefit by having new or upgraded version, analyze on the basis what we don’t get when you continue the same way

2.       For each additional feature look at what you cant do with the existing implementation

3.       Compute the loss in terms of time, cost savings, revenue increase, Productivity gains etc

4.       Present your analysis

I got some idea on what I need to do.

I also realized I cant just copy paste my proposal defense based on what my product ./ services are offered. I need to map to specific business requirements and make more value adding proposal.

Thanks a lot Bholerao.

Raise the Bar and Set Your Goals on any Pitch

Disclaimer: I have been writing the blogs in the style of story telling based on real incidents but with some fiction added to emphasize the message. Hence please do not conclude anything based on the blogs. 

ABC Bank is very special customer for me. We have been doing fine with the Bank through Application Support but I believed there is scope to do more. The guy leading the team is a senior and is a bit over qualified for the role. I however deliberately engaged him to make sure we do everything right for the customer.

When I visited the customer, she invited me with full smile and offered coffee. Linda is very friendly in nature and I know this smile doesnt necessarily mean the engagement is running fine. I quickly got in to the right topic after a few Hello How are you kind of conversation (I dont believe much in the sweet talk when I am not sure of the value add to the customer).

Linda said "I am quite happy with Kant Pai. He is excellent. He was doing whatever I wanted to do"

"I am glad to hear this Linda. I hope you are taking advantage of his experience and get more value from our presence ..."

"No Khaderao. He is perfect. Yesterday he did a data recovery and I was surprised he did this in 4 hours while I was thinking of it as a day long affair. He is quite efficient"

"Thanks Linda. Is there any scope for improvement or for any additional effort?"

"I dont think so."

However she hesitated and than said "Pai was asking for arrangement to work in a location close to his home. I am afraid to say ... he needs to manage on his own without my help"

"Oh, is it? My apologies. Your Bank can't move close to his house (I laughed). I am sure he knows about it. I will tell him right now"

"That will be great if you can explain him. He also had car parking issue and says the fee charged is high here.  You know I will not be able to facilitate any discount or other such support. All our staff are coming the same way"

"Oh God. He cant speak to you for this. I feel you are responsible for this." I again laughed. Linda laughed but asked "Why do you think I am responsible?"

"He is approaching you more than approaching me and it is because you are so nice Customer. But we cant abuse that. Once again my apologies and we can't take your hospitality as an undue advantage. I will fix the issues"

I gave her the sweets I prepared. She liked those Indian sweets last time, when she had dinner at my home. 

I rushed to meet Pai. I was in reality quite furious. 

Pai greeted me but quickly I had to explain him. 

"My dear friend. Linda is quite friendly it doesn't mean she has to go beyond and accommodate you for all personal issues"

"But what is the solution to this? This office is too far for me to drive" Pai continued. It is quite expensive to travel this long. 

"There is a solution. Please shift to a place close to this bank"

"Than I need to do Lease break"

"Yes. If you want to travel less distance you need to do this right?"

I have this problem with many of my team members. Once they travel to overseas they get more greedy than they used to be. They want everything to be managed by the Organization. The projects can be anywhere and members need to manage. This is a long term project and it is easy to adopt. I told him the same. 

"Ok my dear Pai. Good news is that Linda is happy with your work."

"Thanks Khaderao"

But I feel we should do much better.

"Boss, I am doing all she asked and there is lot of work load"

"Doing what customer is asking is just meeting the expectations. Can we exceed the expectations?"

"Khaderao! I am offended. This is application support. what can I do other than support at the application level? there is no access to source code if I develop a few accelerators. There is not even access to database to write triggers. All I can do is screen level support. And you want me to do miracles"

I heard patiently and once he is finished I asked. 

"How many tickets do you get on average per person per day?"

"Lot of tickets and lot work"

This is another issue. Lot of tickets, lot of work! Means he doesnt know what "Lot" means. 

"Pai, We need to get to details to understand. If there is more workload I will speak to Linda for adding more members. Can I get the view of all the tickets made in the last 6 months?"

***

After 1 hour of data collation and analysis we reached a conclusion that peak ticketing is at 1.5 tickets per day. 

The max time that a ticket takes is 2 hours. Means the max time a person is loaded every day is 3.5 hours. 

Pai felt a bit defeated but I tried to motivate him "Pai, dont you think we got more clarity on the work load? This is average but on a day we may get 5 tickets and the other day none. So we need not think we are under utilized"

There is some glow and relief in Pai's face. "Yes, thats why we are still loaded on many days!"

"Now we have an opportunity to do some value add in making the support more effective, what do you say?"

"Yes we may. But Khaderao. I need to make a few points clear. This is application support. I cant to any optimization on Product as the product vendor needs to be consulted for any such cases."

"How about some automations?"

"We dont have access to source code and we are not expected to do coding.... for all coding requirements, product vendor needs to be contracted and our job will be coordinating with them"

"Hmm. Ok can we get more alerts etc to act well before something goes wrong and some one reports the issue?"

Pai is annoyed. "I have been saying that we cant do coding"

I kept quiet and went through the report of all support tickets raised. 

There is one category of tickets which were taking as much as 4 hours for closure.

"What is this and why is it taking 4 hours time?"

"Whenever there is a maintenance activity by the vendor, I need to bring the Instance down. before bringing it down other team needs to do Database locking.It is another team and my team needs to coordinate"

"But why it takes so long even if the tasks are done in two places?"

"The database team needs to inform when the Database is unlocked. thats when the my team will bring the instance up. similar communications are required when Instance is getting down"

"I see. this means it is a manual process. The team needs to wait for confirmation from other teams. Cant we automate this?"

"How sir. I dont have access to Database code or Instance code."

"Sorry. I am not a technical guy but we run script to bring the instance up and down right?"

"Yes"

"we do the same for Database as well and there may be a state which tells the database is locked or not?"

"Yes and yes, I got it. I can write a script which checks the datacase state and runs the script to up or down the instance"

Pai said with excitement. 

"You made my life sir. This is going to reduce the waiting time by around 50%?"

"It will be much more"

"Thanks Pai. I am happy that you are thinking right. I am sure you can find many more such possible improvements. As long as my team doesnt do extra hours we must do this. Do you agree?"

"Yes Khaderao, also my team will be quite motivated as they do some coding apart from doing routine application support"

"Excellent! this is what I want. team should be happy and the customer should be happy"

After a couple of weeks Pai called me and told.

"Khaderao. This is quite exciting. I found a few more areas where we can simplify our monitoring process and identify the issues well in advance. For example, I used a freeware test automation tool and just wrote a text to login to the application. If the login fails there is a possibility that the application is not accessible for any reasons including database down, Network failure or wrong password. But it helps me to act well before the users tell me and escalate"

From the phone I was hearing the beaming voice of Pai.

He continued. "

There was another case where the integration happens between two applications and whenever they fail one log file will be filled. I wrote a script to check every 10 seconds on whether the log file is not empty. I get alert when the log file is not empty which means the integration is failed for some transaction. It doesn't need any access to source code of the integration script but I get to know before some one logs the ticket after several hours."

"Great my dear Pai. I understand you can do this. Did you realize that there is always scope to do well in any condition. A cricketer like Sachin tendulkar will not lose interest even if he is playing a Club team. Probably he would raise the bar and set targets to score 500 runs in a day against such weak teams. We should get such mindset"

Great! Pai is on right track and he do the best for the customer and also to our organization.

Work for Business Goals:Enablers are required but Outcome should not be forgotten

Disclaimer: I have been writing the blogs in the style of story telling based on real incidents but with some fiction added to emphasize the message. Hence please do not conclude anything based on the blogs. 

When I went to Nobel Hospital I found Nobel already waiting there with a garland with bunch of people behind him, all in business suits. Before I got down Nobel opened the Car door and invited me. A beautiful lady came with the garland and before I prevented the garland was around my neck.

"Mr. Khaderao, it is a great feeling to have you here. Please come"

We all went inside. It was stunning experience for me when I looked inside. It was a huge hall fully decorated and equipped with five receptionists sitting in the middle of the floor. All of them are with Neat and Clean Hospital Uniform. Even all other Staff moving on the Hall were full of White and Clean clothes. The Hall is full of room freshener flavor. 

They all greeted me and I folded my hands and told Namaste to them before they offered a hand shake (I am also a mad guy). 

"Dear Khaderao, we have five receptionists to ensure we serve the best. Their job is to ensure who ever enters this building are authorized"

First receptionist Swathi asked me show my bag. She almost tore the bag to check all parts and sides of the bag and ensured there are no dangerous items like Pen Drives, Data Cards, CDs etc. She returned the bag as it is and I needed to close all portions and put all my belongings in to my bag. Thinking that my job is done, I wanted to move forward. But Rosy (next receptionist) stopped me.

"Sir I want to check your laptop"

I replied "I didnt bring laptop" 

"But I need to check sir. My apologies"

"Just now Swathi checked my bag and there was no laptop inside?..."

"Sorry Sir, she checked if there are CDs, Pen Drives etc. I need to check if there is Laptop"

"But she didnt find any laptop in my bag. You also must have seen?"

"As per process I need to do my checks sir, I am sorry without this checking we do not permit any one to go inside our Office'

Nobel interfered and said to me "Dear Khaderao, I know this is slight inconvenience, but we have robust process to ensure there are no risks. Please cooperate"

I was quite impressed and my Bag was again torn to the max limit. There are 3 more to check my bag. Probably one will check if I have bombs and Arms and another whether I have a camera and the last one will check if the Bag is still useful!!!

Fortunately the other checks were completed very fast in an hour. 

When I thought of moving, the last receptionist told me, "Sir outside items are not allowed. I request you to please leave the bag here in reception"

I left the Bag after filling 5 page form with all details of what is in the Bag. 

At last I could go inside the office at about 12.30 PM. It was lunch time. 

Nobel asked me if I want to have lunch. I asked what the best nearby Hotel. I wanted to go but quickly changed my mind after Nobel explained that I need to leave with my bag and enter again through the same process that I followed in the morning. 

"Let us have something here itself. I may not be able to enter again in next 3,4 hours" 

"Lunch inside office is not allowed Khaderao"

Good. One day fasting is better. I made my mind to skip lunch to save that many hours of checks at reception again. 

Nobel took me to the Research and Development Section.

"Dear Khaderao, this is the Research and Development group. The people whoever work here undergo complete checks including mental check to make sure they dont go mad for next 1 year."

"Why So?"

"This is because our systematic approach is not digestible to many immatured people and hence we decided to have this kind of treatment"

We moved forward. 

"We dont supply papers so that people cant print any documents. We dont provide the phone to ensure our team dont call outsiders"

"What if they need any print out? Why cant they call outside?"

"Our Intellectual Property cant go out. If anything is printed you may see the matter and reveal to outsiders. Similarly the guys may call outside and reveal the confidential matter to outsiders"

"What if they need to speak to customers, Experts or others for any clarifications?"

Nobel smiled proudly.

"We have a process for that as well. The team needs to fill this 7 page form and submit a business case for a phone call or a Printout or both. It will go through a robust approval process and we strictly follow the SLA of 10 days. The team are informed to followup only after these 10 days."

Great!!!

"And the conversation is monitored by a team of 10 people and it is recorded as well to make sure the Monitoring team doesnt join hands with the R&D teams and sabotage"

"What if the recording guy also cheats you?"

"It cant happen because the recording is done in such a way that no one can access the recorded item. And no one can know even the place where the recorded version is stored"

Than how you will anyone access that version? I didnt ask the question as I was feeling hungry and not having much energy. 

Nobel took me to another room. Before I asked, he explained "This is brainwashing room"

<!*&%?????

"People who are released from the Services are brainwashed completely to forget all they did here !"

<!*&%?????

"This is because we prevent CDs Pen Drives, Internet Access, Telephone access and what not. But the guy can still remember the content of the Intellectual properties developed here"

This is very innovative!!! 

And really true. The intelligent guys can still store all the information in their brain. It must be thoroughly washed to protect the IP.

Nobel took me to another room. I saw 100 screens on the big wall with 20 people watching the screens without moving the neck. 

"These screens show what is happening in the Hospital. We prevented Printouts, phone calls  and data storage but people talk between themselves and information may pass between them"

Oh thats valid point. 

"If we find any one talking to other in Development room, conference room or even Toilet immediately an incident is logged. A 15 member team will review and interrogate the people on what they talked. Depending on the outcome,  beyond SLA of 30days (Beyond or within ???) the Employee will be punished or even laid off."

I opened my mouth and hearing.

"We may go with a simple punishment of plastering the mouths of members involved in the discussion for a duration of 30 days.  Or we may go to the extreme of terminating them with a fine of 10 Lakh rupees" Nobel elaborated with glowing face. (Currently we have a debate of whether the duration is 30 calendar days or 30 working days. As a matter of safety we are following 30 working days. A 3 member committee is reviewing the Procedure document to figure out what is the correct duration. they will complete the investigation beyond SLA of 2 months- calendar days or ???)

Very systematic!

I saw a few more cameras in the same room. Nobel understood my curiosity and explained before I asked.

"These cameras are to monitor these 20 guys. They cant move their neck towards anything other than screens"

Oh!

"Yes. We also do a mock grill when we deliberately make huge noise of 100 decibels and if any one turns their neck to understand that noise they will be sacked immediately. This is to ensure they are all disciplined and focused towards their work. Even 1% of deviation is taken very serious in my organization"

I appreciate.

He took me to the next room. There are around 50 people sitting and working with lot of concentration. They didnt even look at us. 

"They are all Inspection teams"

"They keep writing new processes to confuse the teams to the best extent. 

~^*%$^#@(*&@^@@????

This is because even our processes are IP (Intellectual Property) Protected. No one should share these processes to outside. More the confusion much is the protection of our IP"

Thats very true.

Nobel took me to Robot section where there are 100+ Robots which can do all types of Surgeries including Heart transplantation. He clarified that even these Robots will be brainwashed to make sure their thinking algorithm keeps changing and cleaned frequently. 

In other wing, all testing equipment are placed. "Anyone even if he is dying in front of me they need to undergo the tests!" Nobel proudly told. "Without the test reports, even a dead body will not be touched by our doctors. We go by everything that is documented. We don't go by anything by apparent symptoms or verbal reports. This is the reason why our auditors don't find even one flaw in our Processes"

Fantastic. 

Nobel took me to another hall which is big to an extent that I can meet the guy on the other end only the next day. There are hundreds of beds with clean bed sheets. Every Bed has a big shelf, lockers, friz and partitions. Beside each bed, there are equipment to support blood tests, Saline loading and even small surgeries etc. What a great Infrastructure. There is a TV infront of the Bed. There is also a room consisting of team which supports the Cable TVs. All that Staff are blind folded. Whenever a repair is required they are allowed to see, fix the issue and go back to blind folds. 

Yes I know why. Intellectual property and Process orientation. 

Nobel took me to Ambulance management. There are 100 ambulances. Each Ambulance is like a house. Everything is there in the Ambulance  Once again TV is also included. Staff were watching "Munnabhai MBBS" when we went there. 

When Nobel went they stopped the TV immediately. Nobel was furious and told them that the TV is for Customers only. 

We went to many other sections and everywhere it is clean, and perfect. 

When I finished the visit, I was checked thoroughly again in the most impressive manner. I collected my bag from the 5th receptionist after filling another form and started to move. But the fourth Receptionist stopped me "Sir, I need to check your bag before leaving"

"Just now I got it from your colleague what will be there other than what you already checked in the morning?"

"Sir that is something I need to confirm. As per process we need to check the visitor before he leaves"

After one full day duration in the the office, I understood a few things and without too many questions I got my bag checked by other 4 as well.

My bag is now in very bad shape but I am still happy to see that nothing offensive was found even after a thorough checking.

"Dear Khaderao, you went through the entire show. How is your feeling?" Nobel asked me on my way back.

"Dear Nobel, I am quite impressed by your infrastructure. All latest equipment, robust practices and the most disciplined team. With this kind of system, I am sure you can do a great job and protect the interest of the IP"

Nobel was very proud.

Suddenly I realized one thing before getting into the car.

"By the way, I didnt see any patients. How many are there?"

So far Nobel was answering all queries confidently but for the first time the smile disappeared from his face. 

I didnt wait for the answer and got in to the Car.

DISCLAIMER:

This Blog is not intended to hurt or criticize any one and the character that I was trying to depict is not any specific person. These were all outcomes of my experience and many times I find myself in one or two aspects of the character Nobel. Directly or indirectly if any of this character or others in the column are resembling any one it is a coincidence only.

Outcome Based Approach

Disclaimer: I have been writing the blogs in the style of story telling based on real incidents but with some fiction added to emphasize the message. Hence please do not conclude anything based on the blogs. 

I received an email from Bhahmaji and I knew this will never be simple. Bharhaji recently went and visited a Customer. This means, the email from Bhahmaji will very likely contain all descriptions on how dissatisfied the customer is, and how the Customer is going to terminate the contract, and how Customer may sue us for a penalty of a few millions. Brahmaji loves to have escalations and reminds the customer on what all the areas when Customer can be unhappy. And than we will see Brahmaji floating emails and action plans on how is he going to address all Customer Concerns. Unfortunately even many organizations have a culture of appreciating leaders who address the escalations. But the leaders who do everything proactively and ensure no escalations are ignored and they may even be asked to leave to accommodate another blue eyed boy (or girl) to manage that "smoothly" running Portfolio.

I was used to it but still I needed to give some attention because at times Brahmaji could be right as well. ​When I opened the email, it was all the same. Customer has lots and lots of complaints and all were opened up when Balaji met them. Not even one was discussed in the weekly customer calls and even som daily calls.

Customer has serious concerns on our ability to do Continuous improvements. He was also worried about the Automation Opportunities which we never worked. He is highly disappointed about us not contributing towards any productivity gains. Support was going, all tickets were being fixed but with no interest on Customer's Business Problems.

Brahmaji completed the email with a statement that the Customer who has been with us for the last 5 years may leave us any day in next week including tomorrow.

He scheduled a crisis meeting.

I fortunately had time to accommodate myself to the discussion.

By the time I joined the call, I was hearing Brahmaji shouting on all the team for not doing anything. I heard the conversation without disturbing the flow of communication. Finally I announced my presence and asked Bhrahmaji on what is the action plan now.

Bhrahmaji said that we made action plan already and here are the major items.

​Action item	​Owner	​Target Date	​Status	​Remarks
​Daily Internal review meeting to be scheduled	​Bhahmaji	​Tomorrow	​Completed	​A Daily meeting calendar generated
​Weekly Project review meeting	​​Brahmaji	​Tomorrow	​In Progress	​Checking with Leaders availability
Steering Committe Review Meetinq ​	​Bhahmaji	​Next week	​In progress	​Checking with Steer Co member availability
​Speak to COE for Support on XXX Technologu	​Keshwa	​Next week	​Open	​XXX technology is required to do the task and the Project Manager needs to get the inputs from COE
​Initiate VISA requet for Apparao	​Chris	​Next week	​Open	​Apparao has to travel to execute Quater Closure issues
​....	​....	​....	​....	​...
​	​	​	​	​

I went through the entire list. For some time I didn't understand what is the plan. I was asking Bhrahmaji "What are the issues? and how are we going to address them?"

"Sir, I already shared the action plan. This plan is to address all concerns and issues raised by the Customer"

"OK. Please explain how are we going to address"

"I scheduled a Daily review call to discuss issues every day"

"OK. than?"

"We will fix the issues. We also scheduled a Project review on weekly basis. We talk to Steering committee on weekly basis and ....."

I opened the action items sheet and said. "Bhrahma.. all the action items that you mentioned will be completed once we schedule the meeting calendar and after a couple of discussions like initiating VISA request, discussing with COE etc. But at the end of closing all these action items are we sure the Issues are addressed?"

Bhahmaji was a bit silent.

"No sir. These are for solving the issues"

"Where is the plan to solve the issues and where is the rationale to decide whether the concerns of the Customer are addressed?

"...."

Can you Please explain what do you want to do and what do you expect to hear that the customer is happy?

"Hmm. If we do these reviews regularly ..."

"Bhahma! do you want the customer to explain what needs to be done to make him happy through these review meetings?"

"This is how I have been making him happy ..."

"Probably you could do that but you always wanted to hear from Customer through several discussions and than do the needful. Why cant we do this before Customer puts this much effort?"

"I cant say anything but it worked"

"OK, how are we going to ensure there is continuous improvement? What are the Automation Opportunities? What is the meaning of Fixing issues without interest and how can you convince customer that we are fixing issues with interest? ...."

"As of today I am not sure sir. But through these reviews ...."

They are all interlinked. You need to analyze and review the support tickets and summarize.

The issues can be repetitive. That is when you need to work on educating and ensuring elimination of the issues through root cause analysis. And by nature if they are bound to repeat, prepare a good Solution document and share instead of fixing them every time.

The issues can be knowledge gaps. In such case propose additional training. Once again the training's can be self paced through View Lets, recorded training's or Idiot guides so the audience don't depend on physical training's. Update the training manuals if required.

The issues can be due to Data. The Data issues can be either because poor migration and conversion scripts for data from other systems and cause Data Corruption regularly. It can also be because of the poor development without restricting the wrong entries without validations. You may have to investigate and clean the scripts apart from fixing the specific data issues.

The issues can also be because of wrong set ups of transactions and parameters. Explain on why certain transaction behave because of the setup and educate the customers to arrive at the right setup. You may also visit the documentation and any need for special training's on them.

Finally the tickets can be for technical Bugs. These are fully because your coding was not doing what was intended. Fix them completely and test thoroughly.

For every issue, tailor your ticketing system to take the inputs on how the addressing or not addressing the issue impacts the Business. This helps you understand how the system is being impacted. Identify the kind of tickets which take longer to fix either because of the external dependencies or by the process. And identify those kind of tickets which impact the Business to Maximum. Pick the top ten and try to optimize them to fix them fast and reduce SLA.

Bhrahmaji seems to have understood but his face shows there are still some open questions.

I picked on ticket that too 4 days to fix the issue.

The ticket is for creating a User to one data warehouse. Why is this taking 7 days ? I looked at the SLA for such type of ticket. The SLA itself was 7 days.

I got in to the details. The User enters the Ticket in the system with the details of his system, and many technical parameters such as Proxy address etc. Many users are not familiar to enter these details. I have seen the support engineer taking the appointment to guide the user to enter these details. User enters the details and than resubmits the details. Support engineer gets some details on her own. Finally the synchronization of the Windows user with this Data-warehousing system takes 30 minutes.!!!!

I said this is an automation opportunity. Brahmaji quickly said that this takes 60 person days to make the Single Sign on.

What is the ticket volume for this User creation? 1200 tickets per quarter. (AUTOMATION)

Hence it is worth doing. All tickets of this category will be eliminated to free at-least 2,3 days of effort per ticket of the users who are supposed to work for business. This means about 2400 Person days of productive time gained by the Customer. These hours can be utilized any where-else for the productivity (PRODUCTIVITY GAINS). In addition, the Users start working in the Data-warehouse within no time. This is again Productivity gain !!!

Now, we continue this kind of analysis and present our observations periodically to the Steering Committee for prioritization and some investment from their side as well for more efficient system and with more productivity. (CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT)

Can the Customer say now that we are fixing the tickets without Interest on Customer ?

Know your Business Problem: Define Problem Statement

One day, I got an urgent call from my fellow leader Anil rathod that there is a serious escalation from the Customer and needed some help. I immediately went to his work place to understand the situation.

"Khaderao, I need as many technical people as possible from your team for the next 6-8 weeks. Please .. I cant fund them as the project is already overrun but I need your help"

I replied "I will try my best, but can I understand the issue and reason for escalation?"

"We need to load 4000 Sales order lines in to the Customer's ERP. They need this to be completed by this week or next"

"Oh, I heard this Cutomer went live recently. Why this escalation?"

"The customer went live 2 months ago. But they didnt enter any Sales orders and continued in their legacy system. Now they realized that they needed all these lines in ERP"

"If that is the case, why is the escalation?"

"Our team told that this can be done only in 4 weeks and asked for a Change request"

"Hmm"

"Customer says no one guided them and informed that Sales orders needed to be entered in ERP"

"Interesting. Once went live, all transactions must be in ERP unless there was a different plan"

"True. But he says no one informed them on the same"

"OK. Now what is the plan"

"I have a very meticulous plan and I am sure we can get there. But I need about 20-25 technical people to execute the plan"

"Why cant the customer wait for 4 weeks if thats what it takes?"

"One second. Let me check."

Anil called the Onsite Project Manager and after a couple of minutes, he said "the Customer needs these lines to be in the ERP before end of Financial Year to show the accounts receivables.... Otherwise his true budget will not be reflected and he will not get sufficient funds for next year"

"How much is the amount approximately"

Anil called his PM again.

"4.85 Billion Dollars"

"Oh." (Now I understand the business Problem)

"OK Anil, can we meet your team?"

On the way to his team working place, I called my technical people to reach there.

When I went there it was a great scene.

Sikhandi was talking to about 15 people.

"Pani, you take the first 100 lines, Veena take 101 to 200. Charles you 201 to 300..... And all of you will be working here till we are finished. I will arrange food and bed for all of you. Ibrahim, you need work with overlaps and keep updating the Onsite team..."

Sikhandi's face was glowing with excitement about the kind of meticulous plan he is going to execute.

In a span of 1 hour Customer made 2,3 calls to know what is the progress. Entire team is full of pressure . But Sikhandi is quite excited to do this.

In the mean time Sikhandi prepared a Dashboard to show how many lines are completed, in progress and yet to be migrated. He generated some charts as well to show the same report in colors and figures.

While Sikhandi's speech was going on, I went to the team lead kind of person and asked her to let me have a look at the list of lines to be migrated to ERP.

I asked her to sort the list in descending order of Line amounts. I generated a Pareto chart to check the lines that cover 80% of the revenue. It needed about 850 lines which are actually amounting to close to 4 Billions.

I waited till Sikhandi completed the speech.

"Anil, please take these 850 lines and distribute to the teams. Let this round be completed with full focus. and there cant be any errors or iterations and they all must work fine once migrated to ERP"

The team got the redistributed list. I told them to take the same time as planned earlier for 4000 lines but do the migration perfectly.

In the mean time customer made a few more calls. I kept the phone disconnected.

By evening the 850 lines were completed and tested.

I asked Sikhandi to provide the Update. Sikhandi was not happy. He however fed the report. Now the graphs show 850 lines completed with % of work completed and so on.

I tweaked a few things and modified the graphs to show how much revenue is covered instead of lines migrated.

Sikhandi was not happy. "We have been sending the progress in terms of lines. I prepared a great dashboard. Now you are sending something else"

I said "Sikhandi, I am not competing with you. For that matter no leader needs to compete with his own team. You are going to send this email with this progress. In the body of message please clearly mention that you covered 80% of the revenue amount to reflect in the ERP."

Sikhandi is a bit relieved. The email was sent. Anil called the customer and updated the same.

"Now you wont get any more calls from the Customer. Please continue the work and complete the rest of the lines in the order that is prepared by Sikhandi (???). "

"Also please ensure ! the Customer should now enter the sales only in ERP. No more lines in the Legacy system please.... "

***

This may conclude that

•  Understand the Problem Statement instead jumping to Solutions
• The key is to identify what is really impacting the stakeholder from the Problem
• Work for sufficient time to understand and plan the right task in place of jumping to tasks with no plan
• The Focus must be on the final outcome
• Every time lining up bunch of people may not work if the plan is missing

How "Stick to Basics" did the turn around

How "Stick to Basics" did the turn around

This is the experience when I took over a portfolio of Development Projects. The portfolio was handed over to me with Profitability of - 7 % and the Customer Satisfaction of  15% (Percentage of Customers who recommend the Organization for other customers).m It was quite challenging when I met each of the Customers for the Projects of the Portfolio. There were as many as 8 Serious escalations and one Customer reached their procurement office to look for alternative vendor. My meeting went with full of grievances and concerns and I spent the first day to note down all the grievances without giving any response. On end of the day, I collated the inputs and arrived at a conclusion that all issues were boiling down to 6 major areas. Second day the trend continued but I was getting closer to the resolution path. Once my meetings were done I met the manager of all the Customers and requested him for breathing time of a month. He asked what is the kind of master plan that I had to resolve the issues that were continuing for more than a year. 

I explained him the top 3 reasons as Poor requirement gathering, Poor internal quality assurance and the Project Management. Even though all three functions were happening from my teams it needed some direction and regrouping in the way it was required. 

I made the testing and Solutioning as independent functions and isolated from the Project team. This means, Testing team does the testing fully with focus of identifying as many bugs as possible, to cover as many scenarios as possible, to test for breaking the system and allow for fixing and making a robust system. Without the testing team's consent the Components will not be given to the Customer for final testing. And all the internal testing, defects and resolution reports will be shared with the Customer on regular basis. The test leads were given direct connect with the Customers to operate independently instead of routing through the Project manager in the earlier model.

The Solutions team will be again working as independent units. they will do the requirement gathering, design/ validate the designs and test scripts and also oversee the deployment. The team ensures the coding is done with compliance to standards, covering security, performance, Look and feel aspects apart from meeting the required functionality. 

Project Management was taken over by me as I didnt want to take any chance. But I also setup an internal training through workshops for improving the Project Management skills. In the projects I was overseeing, I broke the entire phase in to daily activities and tracked at that levels. It was more like executing through Check list. No great science like Agile model or any sort of it, but I followed a simple principle of breaking the entire activities in to tasks of not more than a day duration with each task mapped to the resource. I filtered the tasks by dates and tracked on what is going well and what is not.  It took a week for me to make the plan and it went on it's own from than on-wards. 

Customer confidence was gained from the point when we made our work transperant to convince the customer that the team is working with dedication. the daily test reports, updates on any design changes even if they are very small, any alerts on the dates even if delayed by 1 day were a few items that provided the comfort to the Customer.

At the end, we got lot of accolades and we did 26 releases all either on time or ahead of schedule with no significant defects on Live or Post live of the deployment.

We also didn't lose any profitability in this process as the Project was not overrun. 

The major conclusion is that we didnt try to innovate any new methods, Processes or Best Practices and all we did is "Stick to Basics". Many times this is what works and we miss and look for innovations.

The below is the summary of challenges we faced and how we addressed them along with final outcomes.

Challenges

• Poor Product Quality (Large Defects)
• Requirement understanding and conflicts
• Project Overruns
• Project Management
• Attrition of Key people and failure to manage the impact
• Last minute Surprises

How we addressed in Planning & Design phase

• Progressive elaboration and Validation of Scope and Time Lines: Pre-planning exercise to finalize the project plan based on completion of requirement analysis & approval
• Pre-planning exercise culminates with delivery of agreed project execution plan.
• Design reviewed and approved by Independent Architects before presenting to Customer’s Technology Board  for Review 

How we addressed in  Execution Phase

• Daily Connect with Customer (S)
• Dedicated and Independent Testing team to certify the Deliverables before offering for User acceptance
• Full cycle of regression testing for any release (Major/Minor/Hotfix)
•  AS IS – TO BE documentation for any code changes to avoid redundancy
• TO BE code change review by  Tech lead & Architect before implementing
•  All DB changes reviewed by independent DBA before adding into code
• Daily Stand in Meeting
• Cross-skilled team, Documentation and SOPs  to offer flexibility and  address attrition

What we Achieved

• •Delivered 26 Releases either on time or ahead of schedule
• •Negligible defects identified in User Acceptance Tests
• •No impact of attrition to the Delivery due to the robust succession management
• •No Post production issues identified
• •Customer delight improved to 90%
• •Still achieved the Profitability of >20%