Decision Maker Support - an example
The example below shows the benefits of having on demand independent technical advice backed by business experience to help reach and make the best decisions.
The problem
A blue-chip company has a large multi-site contact centre and as part of the support team for the centres, there is a team of people responsible for operational management information (MI), that is, the data used on an intra-day, daily or weekly basis to actually make decisions about how the contact centre should be managed.
There was considerable pressure from a business-wide IT strategy to move all reporting to a single platform, and have all data stored in a data warehouse and a series of data marts. Neither the reporting solution nor the database matched what the operational MI team used. The people responsible for implementing the new reporting system and data marts where a very well known large consultancy firm. Understandably from their point of view they didn’t want rouge databases and reporting solutions around messing up the new unified world. There were numerous meetings between themselves and the operational MI team as to the way forward, with the consultancy firm pushing to have all data moved in to their systems, and the operational MI team wanting its independence.
The manager responsible for all the centres resource planning, allocation and support services, including the operational MI team needed to get some independent advice as what the real technical issues were and how that may effect her part of the business. Was the MI team just opposed to change? Was there a technical reason the business-wide approach couldn’t be taken? Was there a business reason to go with one solution or another? What were the likely costs of maintaining two systems - indeed were two systems needed? Just who was going to use the data once in the data mart other than the operational MI team. Did the strategic solution really take in to account the nature of operational MI as against business MI (which tends to focus on month-ends, year-to-dates etc).
The solution
Answering these type of questions correctly, quickly and with a good understanding of both technical and business implications can make a huge impact on day to day running of something like a contact centre. The ability to have rapid access to recent data, and the ability to implement change quickly and accurately is what separates success from failure. The manager in question knew what she wanted to achieve from the point of view of running a centre, but she would need support and correct and independent advice if she was to stick her neck out and try and buck the corporate strategy. She would need someone who was prepared to not only find out the answers to these questions, but assist her in the preparing a case, and be prepared to go to the board and argue the case with her. She needed Decision Maker Support.
The outcome
The result was that the operational MI team was allowed to keep their database server and unique reporting solution - in fact it has gone from strength to strength. It provided considerable business benefits by having the data the centre needed always at hand, throughout the day, and with the ability to change it at very short notice. The team would keep the strategy people happy by creating access points, so data could be ’sucked’ into the data warehouse if required (to date it has not been required).
Colrosa is well placed to offer the kind of Decision Maker Support described above to ensure that key decisions are made with the business interests placed first, but still fully understanding the technical options available, their costs and impact, both short and long term.
Back to Decision Maker Support overview.
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