Quality assurance

Customers Service, US still has the lead

As manager, one of the things that I always miss about the US is the quality of customer service you can get in the US. In my daily work as a manager here in this side of the world, I constantly need to call various vendors to order services for my company, 90% of the time, vendors cannot deliver on schedule.

Working in the US, on-time performance was on top of my priorities as consultant and it understood by both vendors and clients that on-time performance was something taken for granted.

Unfortunately, on-time performance is something you cannot be taken for granted in many parts of the world nor even call back cannot be taken for granted.

Here are some real life examples of customer service issues I had to deal with in the past:

My company: Hello, I am calling you regarding our car that you fixed; we are still waiting on you to send us the final bill.
The vendor: Oh, I am sorry, I was on vacation for the last 3 weeks, and I forgot to call you and send you the bill.
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Our company: Hello, I am calling you regarding the service appointment we had with you for today to come and look at our printer.
The Tech: oh really? Yes yes, now I remember you called me yesterday to set the appointment. I am sorry; can I come today at 12.30PM?
Our company: Yes, you can (and we never hear from the tech again)
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Our company: (calling major auto dealer in town) Hello, I called your cell phone number that you gave me to let you know if we want to fix our car or not, but you did not answer although I called you few times.
The customer service tech at the dealer: oh but I don’t answer calls from un-known numbers (this has to be classis)
————————————————————————————————

These are only a small list of a huge problem with customer service issues you face here. Many people in the US complain about the quality of customer service in the US, but the US still lead the world in the quality of customer service provided and the world still has a lot to learn from the US in this matter.

The Issue with American “Date” Format

In the US, the Month always comes before the day, so, February 25-2009 would be written 3-25-2009. I am not aware of any other country that uses the same format; I don’t know what is the history behind it.

But using this date format could create serious problem when dealing with international customers. In my work outside of the US, we have to send various types of documents back to US companies and not knowing the exact due date on some document lead to serious performance issues.

Also some software developed in the US have the same issue. Currently I am using a vehicles maintenance software that I bought from a US Company and the date format in it is based on US standards, although I will continue using the software, I have to inform all users about the problem with date format.

In order for US software development companies to make their product more appealing to international customers, software development standards in the US must be aware of these small but important issues.

The world’s worst Spam Haven countries

If you, like many savvy Internet users today, depend heavily on your e-mails as a mean of communications, you must check your blocked e-mail or spam e-mail folders frequently. What a PAIN.

Every single day, I have to check my bulk e-mail folder few times, I have to do this because almost every few days I find important e-mails found its way to the bulk e-mail folder.

I have been thinking, why we can’t just stop the spammers? It’s a very simple question to ask you may think but its not that simple. Countries and ISPs are not working hard enough to stop this practice.

I found some interesting facts about spam and spammers by visiting Spamhaus website at www.spamhaus.org. The Spamhaus Project is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to track the Internet’s spam operations, to provide dependable real-time anti-spam protection for Internet networks, to work with Law Enforcement Agencies to identify and pursue spammers worldwide, and to lobby governments for effective anti-spam legislation.

Visit their web site to find some really interesting facts about spam and spammers.

What is COBIT?

1. What is the purpose of COBIT?
The purpose of COBIT is to provide management and business process owners with an information technology (IT) governance model that helps in delivering value from IT and understanding and managing the risks associated with IT. COBIT helps bridge the gaps amongst business requirements, control needs and technical issues. It is a control model to meet the needs of IT governance and ensure the integrity of information and information systems.
2. Who is using COBIT?
COBIT is used globally by those who have the primary responsibilities for business processes and technology, those who depend on technology for relevant and reliable information, and those providing quality, reliability and control of information technology.

Can I use COBIT as a statement of criteria for specific audit conclusions?
Yes, basing the IT Assurance Guide firmly on the control objectives takes the auditor’s opinion out of the audit conclusion, replacing it with authoritative criteria. COBIT is based on more than 40 standards and best practices documents for information technology from standards-setting bodies (public and private) worldwide. These include documents from Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and the United States. Because COBIT contains all pertinent worldwide standards identifiable at the time of publication, it is all-inclusive with respect to IT controls standards. As a result, COBIT can be used as an authoritative source reference document, providing IT controls criteria on audits.

The above information and more FAQ about COBIT can be found at:

 http://www.isaca.org/Content/NavigationM…

Global Executives Reveal Their Top IT Problems

In a survey conducted by independent IT Governance Institute (ITGI) earlier this year revealed some major IT problems faced by Global Executives, what do you think the major problems were?

1-Insufficient IT staff availability
2- Service delivery issues
3- Difficulty proving the value of information technology

All the above issues I can relate too, but I think the most interesting one is “the Difficulty proving the value of information technology.” There are still many businesses world-wide who are not able to see the benefits of having the latest Information technology implemented or can justify the cost of purchasing information technology.

At my own job where I am working now, I am not able to convince the management of the advantages of having IP telephony.

The other two points are important too and I don’t think IT staff shortages or Service delivery issues are problems to be resolved in the near future.

Batch Processing and ActiveBatch 7.0 Part 2

As I wrote in my last post, I will try to devote few articles to Batch Processing and ActiveBatch 7.0. Again Jim Manias from Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc., e-mailed me some great PDF files on Batch Processing and ActiveBatch 7.0

Here I will list some features of ActiveBatch 7.0 that I found at ActiveBatch website: http://www.activebatch.com

ActiveBatch® Enterprise Job Scheduling & Event Automation – Reducing the Cost of Operations:

ActiveBatch, Enterprise Job Scheduling integrates business applications, standalone tasks, processes and scripts across diverse distributed computing environments creating a centralized view of operations at the organizational or enterprise level.

ActiveBatch is a cross platform solution that easily structures tasks and/or applications into organized and integrated workflows. The result is reliable, unattended operations that trigger workflows by Date and Time, Events (e.g. File Triggers & WMI Events) or completion status to ensure that IT and Operations Management achieves results as required by the business.

ActiveBatch Job Scheduling and Event Automation organizes and manages these tasks and workflows into a unified/integrated workflow on various platforms (e.g. Microsoft Windows, Linux, UNIX and OpenVMS) and across custom and business aware applications like SQL Server while providing various job types such as Secure FTP, E-mail, File Operations, Script or Process.

ActiveBatch’s unique architecture incorporates proven Microsoft Windows, Oracle, HP and other technologies already implemented in your environment to simplify and take advantage of leveraged learning by incorporating the following:

* Microsoft Windows Security Model Including Kerberos
* Improve interoperability with jobs and applications for Windows, Linux, UNIX along with other platforms. Our cross platform software allows a job to pass information and data between applications and systems.
* Active Directory or ADAM
* SQL Server 200x or Oracle
* WMI & SNMP Trapping
* HP Operations Center, MOM or SCOM for Enterprise Monitoring
* Script Language Independence

ActiveBatch has achieved proven results in over 1200 sites around the world by:
1. Reducing Errors from Manual Operations
2. Eliminating “Slack Time” during processing using completion status of predecessor jobs
3. Integrating Workflows, using Graphical controls or Property sheets
4. Lowering the Overall Operation Costs
5. Improving Service Levels

Batch processing and ActiveBatch 7.0

If you are a business manager or IT consultant, you know that there is not enough time, time is your biggest killer, so many tasks that need to be executed in the shortest possible time.

The concept of batch processing (in its simplest form) is to have a software program (script) run a task for you. For example: each morning you launch your web browser and navigate your way to your chosen financial broker website to get the latest activities on a stock, with batch processing, you can automate this daily activity so at certain hour of the day, you will have the stock(s) activities displayed on your screen or even e-mailed to you.

Batch processing is to automate repetitive tasks by writing scripts (codes.) In my early programming days, I had to write scripts to run tests on website, they idea was to have the script send thothands of page requests to a particular website, to simulate the actual users. Writing the script was time consuming and error prone.

Since that time, lots of improvement is being made in the automation of batch processing. Several software vendors are offering solutions to ease task creation under batch processing. One the vendors’ solutions that I had the privilege to review was Activebatch 7.0 by Advanced Systems Concepts. Using tele-conferning and web conferencing, Jim Manias from Advanced Systems Concepts, gave me a great overview of the new ActiveBatch 7.0 release.

On of the main features of ActiveBatch 7.0 (which I try to discuss more in the coming posts), is significantly reducing the need to write scripts, most of scripts writing is already done for you, you only have to chose the task and click.

In the next several posts, I will try to get into more details of ActiveBatch 7.0 features.

Morro from Microsoft

One more security suite in the market from a big vendor. As a consultant from small businesses, I have to deal with fire walls and security suite for small networks. Live One Care was Microsoft solution for home PCs and small network security needs.

As a PC user and professional consultant, I am against using any popular security suite that comes bundled with new PCs or are widely used by consumers. From the average user point of view, security suites such as (Norton and McAfee) are difficult to setup and configure; I was always against installing these solutions in my clients’ computers. I still remember how difficult is (for the average user) to setup wireless network access permission in Norton firewall.

I have installed Live One Care few times, but I don’t really have any experience using it. Market data indicating that only 2% of the professional are using Live care as their security solution; Microsoft remedy was to release Morro, which is supposed to be a better solution.

My advice to software vendors, just come up with something that is easy to install and configure, a firewall that doesn’t ask the user to supply too much technical data.

Currently, I am using Zone-Alarm, which as much easier to setup and configure than the other popular security suites in the market.

Will desktops disappear one day as did the old TV sets?

Have you ever thought about counting how many laptops and how many desktops are in your work place? What advantage desktops are still having over laptops? Screen size, speed and storage capacity would be the few advantages desktops have over laptops. One big advantage desktops have over laptops is BIGGER keyboard, at least for me.

Space was the biggest factor for me when switching from desktop to laptop, after I bought my first laptop and put it on my desk, I was amazed by the amount of space I start to have on my desk. Also cleaning was a factor for me, cleaning a laptop (from outside at least) is easier than cleaning a desktop.

I am not trying to compare the two from technical aspect, for sure desktops are more powerful and easy to upgrade than laptops, but I am talking about comfort and ease of use.

Will desktops use will be limited in the future and laptops will take over for the average user needs?

Finish what you have started

What is the distinguishing character of the most successful people? They finish what they have started.

Good business plans are only good if they are fully implemented. Many businesses started with great ideas only to see these businesses fail, they had a plan, they started to work on the plan, but they didn’t follow through.

When the management fails to emphasize the importance of following through, employees will not follow through on their job performance.

In the past few months, I had several incidents where I didn’t get excellent customer service support. In one of my international flights with a world class airlines, I had to change my destination after I checked in my luggage, only to find out later that my bags didn’t not arrive with me on the same flight. I have talked to the airlines customer agent and explained to him in full details about my intentions to change my flight routes and he re-assured me over and over that my checked in luggage will be with me on the same flight, but later on I found out that this agent didn’t not do his job thoroughly and he didn’t not rely the message to the ramp agent to pull the luggage from one flight and load into another.

In another incident, I had a tech support issue so I called the tech support line, only to talk with half trained technicians who kept giving me different answers for the same issue, a very simple problem that kept going on week after week which eventually took less than one minute to fix.

If these customer support representatives were told in their training that once they take an ownership of an issue, they must follow it through until it has been resolved, they would have paid better attention to the customer who is waiting on the other side of the line and they could have save their companies time and money.

Finish what you have started and follow through with your commitments and you will see how success will follow.