I'm an at unusual point after managing the provisioning and processes of all our ADSL and Corporate ADSL/SHDSL customers for over 7 months now. This and in addition to ensuring the integrity of our trans-operational platforms between different systems means I'm a busy bee.
But sometimes the sheer nature of the complexities that is managing the operational/functions side of systems means you can get caught up in it. Demanding the 'perfect' integration of providing services and capturing all the problems in a nice, neat little basket.
Case in point - I was alerted as the number #1 cause of refunds from the Finance team was due to incorrect qualification of orders that 'appeared' OK for service, but turned out that the infrastructure simply wasn't possible to provide one.
Result - Transactions already being debited, customers receiving hardware they shouldn't have, complaints, extra provisioning work to handle the inquiry.
I had a meeting with one of our Telstra Account managers and operations manager which highlighted this issue.
Could Telstra change their process to better suit Exetel's needs? - Bloody unlikely! (I don't know who said this, I guess I'll find the appropriate author later)
So, the course of action was to tackle how these came about. Ah! your classic sub-exchange, RIM culprits.
Telstra have a list of exchanges, including sub-exchanges and RIMs with number allocations! - OK! We could devise something here. My mind quickly goes into overdrive as to possible ways of having this done. We could have the development team implement a process, submit this list, have the DB check of exchanges - if they match, POW! But ah wait...it doesn't show what PARTICULAR sub-exchanges or RIMS...problems.
In fear of skewing my thoughts off on some gargantuan tangent of doom - I decided to look back at what we do now. What's currently happening?!
Appointment date fields are populated..ok....
Telstra held dates are populated..ok......
But wait - We have a status check for these... perhaps maybe the big 'T' takes an eternity and back again to advise. Let's check the LOLO and B2B logs..
answer? - 4 hour notification between submission and Held notice.
WOW - light bulb moment.
The process to figure this out was there all along. By simply making precedence to held dates over writing activation dates, we stop the wheels in motion that would otherwise lead to perpetual doom.
A quick scope to the lead programmer and implementation done within a matter of minutes,changing no less than 1-5 lines of code changed/added.
1-5 lines of codes translates to;
- reducing thousands of dollars per month for unnecessary transactions
- informing customers quicker of status changes
- less time and money for multiple departments as this flow on effect is stopped dead
- No changes to how current systems work - including my own and other departments
And the answer was there, hidden away.
So if the Acronym didn't immediately ring alarm bells as to the nature of this entry, it's the age old principle of K.I.S.S - Keep It Simple Stupid. It really is amazing how easily and how accurate this works, not to mention the time and effort saved on all fronts.