SUPPORT CENTER, INC. LUKE LINDQUIST BUS550

COMPANY OVERVIEW Call Center with $400M annual revenue 190 Employees Created from the merger of 3 other call center type companies Somerfield, Inc Specialized in 1 st party collections Charleston & Associates Specialized in 3 rd party collections Telecomm Sales, Inc Specialized in 1 st party telemarketing of various products SCI has since discontinued this part of their operations

COMPANY ORGANIZATION No formal organization No formal reporting requirements No data standardization No continuity plans

IT ORGANIZATION

ISSUES Frequent System “Outages” in the listed peripherals: Davox (Predictive Dialer) Siemens switch Website/FTP AS/400 (Client/collections information system) General data mismanagement Payment systems between 1 st and 3 rd party collection methodologies Poor database usage for financial/accounting reporting Lack of a continuity plan Nightly back up of “critical files” relevant only to the Davox

SYSTEM “OUTAGES” 6-10 outages per year, at least 1 lasting a week long. Has cost the company several major clients Purported Reasons Hardware (Davox and AS/400) is severely aging No supporting documentation for either exists anymore Manufacturer support is slow to respond One server for client interface It’s not reported whether or not IT staff have skills to maintain hardware

DATA MISMANAGEMENT Standard protocol sees the Dialer Administrator (DA) manually transmit campaign data from FTP site and import it into the Davox. Frequent errors occur as a result of this manual transmission Results in data for previously closed account being lost Purported Reasons DA mistakenly overwrites previous campaign IDs with redundant and/or new data No documentation for job responsibilities Training is lacking

PAYMENT SYSTEM CONFUSION 1 st party payment systems are controlled by automated interface between Davox and Lyricall script application. Forces agents to use a specific set of data elements to process payment 3 rd party collections agents are more autonomous 3 rd party collections agents process payments outside of company/contract policies Results in partial payment postings and inconsistencies in systems that manage payments Purported Reasons 3 rd party agents get lazy, bypass some of the screens that 1 st party agents are forced to use

FINANCIAL/ACCOUNTING USE OF DB Accounting staff typically conduct their work from data extracts taken at one point in the month Therefore, data being used is not “current”. Clear reconciliation of data from the several managements systems is almost impossible Purported Reasons Reports generated from all systems use inconsistent data elements Makes for manually intensive data manipulation

LACK OF A CONTINUITY PLAN No continuity plan exists IT has no disaster recovery protocols Several outages annually make this recipe for disaster

RECOMMENDATIONS Using a model based in Enterprise Application Software solutions, SCI should completely reexamine their hardware/software configurations, update their identity management system and integrate all of their systems into one database. System outages can be mitigated by implementing one hardware solution that handles all of the major benefits of the Davox and the Siemens switch. Data mismanagement can be mitigated if IT developed an automated transmission protocol for campaign data (i.e. SCI website interfaces directly with SQL database). Also, sufficient training and documentation of duties in this department is essential Payment system confusion would be lessened if IT developed a separate UI for agents handling 3 rd party accounts. IT must hire competent database/query managers to supplement accounting’s needs A continuity plan must be developed.

REFERENCES 1.The History of the Predictive Dialer. 2.Sue Conger. S UPPORT C ENTER, I NC. (A). University of Dallas 3.Enterprise software.

QUESTIONS 1.One main reason for campaign (new customer account info) data loss is: a)FTP site is not backed up b)The data is not transmitted in the correct format c)Dialer administrator user error d)Flat files are not supported in the current DB environment 2.Why is a continuity plan important? a)So business operations are not severely damaged during system outages b)Data recovery is seamless c)Mitigates loss of client relationship due to IT related problems d)All of the above 3.What is the problem caused by the difference in payment systems between 1 st and 3 rd party agents? a)3 rd party agents don’t get their commission checks b)1 st party agents don’t have access to credit card machines c)3 rd party agents skip steps, potentially creating violations of company and contract policy d)Automated payments systems are untrustworthy.