How to reduce Application Maintenance costs?

Maintenance requirements vary depending on type of business and the applications used. Requirement for maintenance may occur because of  

• sharp increase in transaction volumes 

• increase in business process enhancement 

• support requests which are caused by a lack of system flexibility

This increases incidents and user support requirements.

Application maintenance organizations are very careful when it comes to application maintenance. They set up a fixed team of people who are pre-trained on the application so they can attend to high priority work quickly during such times when the number of support requests is high. The size of the team is set to handle this increase in the number of requests. As a result, they have excess capacity and in turn excess costs when maintenance is not at a peak.

Reasons for high application maintenance cost:

1. When handling high priority maintenance issue/problems, one should have prior knowledge of the application. The kind of knowledge that is required to support and maintain applications cannot be acquired from specification documentation and user guides. This knowledge is usually attained with experience over a long period of time so maintenance teams cannot rapidly adjust the available resources to respond when the numbers of requests increase.

2. Most incidents are due to recurring problems. The support staff responds to the initial incident but the underlying cause to permanently eliminate the problem is rarely fixed. Hence, the recurring problems contribute to increase in the number of support requests.

3. Systems are designed and built in such a way that they require maintenance because they are not made robust using user controlled parameters and dynamic data validation as it increases the development costs. These decisions increase future maintenance costs and impact reliability.

Reduction in costs:

1. Fix recurring problems to reduce incident request which in turn reduce maintenance cost.

2. Add functionality to enhance flexibility with user-controlled parameters to decrease the need for enhancements and user support.

3. Document support knowledge and cross-train others so that people can multi-task across applications to balance increase in maintenance requests. This improves utilization of human resource and allows them to be shared across applications so that Application Maintenance resources costs are reduced.

In addition to these recommendations, development teams must avoid adding long-term maintenance requirements when they build applications by making it robust. Reducing service levels and implementing good application maintenance processes can yield short and long-term cost reduction results with minimal consequences on day-to-day business activities.

Image Source: Google Images

About Author:

Harpreet Kaur Dua is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at: harpreet.dua@spluspl.com 

Underlying Competencies of Business Analyst

Underlying Competencies provide guidelines of the behaviors, uniqueness, understanding and personal qualities that are essential for a business analyst.

Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving

Creative Thinking - Business analysts must be effective in coming up new approaches to problem solving and in giving alternative solutions.

Decision Making - Business analysts must be effective in comprehending the criteria concerned in making a decision, in making the decision, and in supporting others to make better decisions.

Learning - Business analysts must be proactive at learning about different business domains and how they function, and then translating it to the benefit of the organization.

Problem Solving - Business analysts must be effective at identifying and solving problems in order to ensure that the real, core problem is understood and those solutions actually solve the problem.

Systems Thinking - Business analysts must be effective at understanding how the people, processes and technology within an organization interrelateto create a system as a whole.

Behavioral Characteristics

Ethics - A business analyst must be able to act ethically to earn the faith and admiration of stakeholders and propose ethical solutions to problems.

Personal Organization - Personal organization assists the business analyst in efficiently managing tasks and also in decision making.

Trustworthiness - Earning the key stakeholders’ trust isessential to ensure that the business analyst is able to acquire requirements around insightful issues and to ensure that solutions are evaluated properly.

Business Knowledge

Business Principles and Practices - Business analysts require an understanding of prime business principles and best practices, in order to ensure that they are integrated into and supported by solutions.

Industry Knowledge - Business analysts should have complete knowledge of the industry that their organization is in so that they can face new challenges that may be posed by the competitive market, and have knowledge about the effective solutions.

Organization Knowledge – Understanding of the organization is significant in business analysis.

Solution Knowledge - Knowledge of existing solutions help business analysts identify the most effective solution among existing ones.

Communication Skills

Verbal communication - Verbal communication skills enable business analysts to capably communicate ideas in ways that are suitable to the target audience.

Written Communication - Written communication skills are required for business analysts for the documentation of results, requirements and other information.

Interaction Skills

Facilitation and Negotiation - Business analysts should make possible interactions between stakeholders to help resolve disagreements, if any, regarding requirements, etc.

Leadership and Influencing - Business analysts need to be able leaders, to give guidance to others in investigating requirements and to help encourage stakeholder support for a necessary change.

Business Analysts should develop these and other competencies to in order to execute project assignments successfully. What Underlying Competencies would you add to the list to improve the chances of success in Business Analysis?

About Author:

Sachin Poojary is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, he actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. He can be contacted at: sachin.poojary@spluspl.com 

A Project Managers – Weekly Checklist

A project manager is the person who has the overall responsibility for the successful initiation, planning, design, execution, monitoring, controlling and closure of a project. The project manager must have a variety of skills – he should be able to understand requirements, ask questions, detect the unstated, and go deeply into understanding what the root issue is, have people skills, and should be able to resolve conflicts. The better a project manager can analyze and recognize the risk associated with the project – the better he can avoid and mitigate the risk. Certain risks can be avoided if we maintain and follow the checklist for every week. Here is the checklist I follow:

Team Meetings

Unity is strength...when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved. It is necessary that the whole team meets daily and discuss what is that they have completed the previous day and what they plan on completing today. That will allow you to touch base as a group each morning and will keep the team expecting communication, oversight and accountability from you daily. It’s great idea to keep the project up & running.

Client Meetings

Just as we need to keep our project team engaged and on task, we need to do the same with our project client. One project status call and touch base each week may be fine for small projects or during slow times, but for larger and high visibility projects or projects experiencing ongoing issues those touch points need to happen more often.

Budget

The project budget is always important and keeping it in front of the team and the customer only serves to elevate it to a new level of visibility, oversight and accountability. By reviewing and revising your project financials every week the PM is far more likely to see budget issues before they get out of hand. This helps on a long term.

Project Timeline

Make it a habit to check every week where the project stands. Dedicate a special hour on a fixed day of every week. Check what was promised to the customer in terms on delivery and if are still on track on not. Based on this meeting we can take additional measure to ensure timelines are met or deadlines are pushed.

De-Stress

Hard work must always be rewarded. Make sure the team is not stressed out and has enough time to de-stress. A PM can ensure this by engaging the team in various team activities. Team outings and gatherings ensure more bonding in team and will ultimately lead to better results.

The success or failure of a project depend highly on a Project Manager. He must possess high management and people skills. And most importantly he should be able to mitigate risks. Uncertainties must be avoided. Hence a Project Manage must keep clear & crisp communication and ensure that each team member expresses their voice and address their concerns. And don’t forget the weekly checklist.

About Author:

Shweta Samudra is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at: shweta.samudra@spluspl.com 

Inventory Management

Inventory refers to any goods a company holds as raw material or for the purpose of sale / resale or simply as end products out of a manufacturing unit. Controlling and managing inventory effectively such that there is no wastage or shortage of goods is known as inventory management. Inventory is a major asset for any company and is tied up with investment until that good is sold or used in production. Hence it is also directly proportional to the profit or loss that the company makes. 

Some components for a good inventory system:

1. Systematically placed location with names – The item must be systematically placed in such a way that the temperature and other environmental condition suit its storage. The location must also have a specific and unique name which can be easily located by employees.

2. Easy to read location labels - The names on the location labels must be clearly written. To avoid mistakes, try to print the labels in big and bold characters instead of handwritten ones. This will help the employees to store the inventory in correct location and avoid unnecessary hassle.

3. Unique item numbers – Numbering all the inventory items helps in easy reference and avoids confusion. But care must be taken to ensure each item type is uniquely numbered

4. Keep track of activities – A good inventory system must keep track of all the activities performed. This will help in keeping historical records and also provide insights. Access to the system must also be controlled and restricted.

5. Provide training – Employees are surely not expected to understand the inventory management system all by themselves. Training must be conducted for smooth functioning of the inventory management. Training manuals must be prepared so that employees can refer to it for any difficulty at a later point.

Inventory Valuation Methods:

As mentioned earlier, inventory is purchased by an organization for the purpose of selling it to customers. In the company’s balance sheet, inventory is reported as current asset. If the inventory is too less, it might result in loss of customers / sales. Excess inventory results in additional expenses (storage, insurance, etc) and the items might become obsolete too which results in loss. Hence it is important to monitor the inventory closely.

Cost of sold items – Cost of the item is usually the cost from the supplier plus any additional cost incurred during transporting or storing the item like handling charges, duties, taxes, etc. This cost is reported as the inventory cost until the item is sold. Once the item is sold, the cost is removed from the inventory account and reported as cost of goods sold on the income statement.

Inventory Costing Methods:

An organization must adopt an inventory costing method which remains consistent right from year one. Explained below are some of the common methods:

First In, First Out (FIFO) – This method is based on the assumption that an inventory purchased first is sold first. Hence, inventory cost under this method will be based on the latest purchase. Basically the oldest cost of inventory items (first-in) is assigned to cost of items sold. On the other hand, the most recent costs are assigned to items in ending inventory.

Last In, First Out (LIFO) – This method is based on the assumption that an inventory purchased last is sold first. Hence, the cost of the inventory will be based on cost of earliest purchases.

Average Cost Method (AVCO) – This method is calculated taking into consideration the weighted average cost of all purchases. Average cost is calculated each time a purchase is made and an item is added into the inventory.

An inventory management system helps organizations to manage huge inventory with less minimum manual labour. Though a cost must be incurred to put this system in place, it will prove efficient in the long run. 

About Author:

Kintu Racca is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at kintu.r@spluspl.com

Customer engagement program – Involving customers to build and sell “Their” products

Veterans in retail industry always knew the value of the customers. Once a customer always should be customer. No matter for how much small quantity or value the customer has approached our retail store, satisfy him to maximum. In future we would get big sales from “satisfied” customers.

In formal marketing term this is called as “Customer Lifetime value”.

It is important that customer feels “Important’. He feels as part of the organization. Realize that he is “Heard” and “Understood”. This can be achieved by various customer engagement program.

Following are few examples of Customer engagement programs:

Involve Customer in product development:

Yes. You have read it right. Involve customers’ right in product development. We develop products to satisfy customer needs, so why not involve him directly?

In this program, various schemes are launched wherein customer’s inputs are taken for product development. Sometimes it is even named after the person suggesting the details (E.g. XYZ recipe).

Is this program ever used in India? Look at the below examples:

Me & Meri Maggi

This program involved customers directly sharing their Maggi Noodle recipes which were showcased on Maggi website along with the contributors details.

This program also involved users sharing stories with Maggi, making Maggi unreplaceable component in their life.This campaign helped Maggi achieve loyalty of customers over their competitors.

Mobile Applications: Communicate with customer:

One aspect of customer engagement is building brand awareness. Constant, targeted and effective communication to customers at right time.

Mobile application is one of the way to achieve this.

Through mobile application, companies can communicate news, offers, also displays stores around based on GPS location in order to pull customers into their retail space (Online or showroom).

Customer Loyalty programs:

It is one of the way to achieve customer lifetime value.Here customer not only gets advantages (reward points) by shopping at your retail space multiple times nut also allows retailers to get vital customer buying behavioral data / trend. This can be effectively used in personalized communications to push products/offers “Specially” created for the esteemed customer. And who is not going to be happy for “Special” preferences?

Seeking for active feedback for product / service. (Feedback survey to understand online shopping experience by Flipkart).

Constant checking with customer regarding satisfaction level of product/services. (Eg. Calls by telecom companies to understand satisfaction level of the services)

It is easy for retailer to increase sales by gaining “Trust” of the targeted customers through customer engagement programs.

About Author:

Saurabh Kane is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, he actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. He can be contacted at: saurabh.k@spluspl.com

E- procurement

What is E-procurement?

E-procurement, also known as Supplier Exchange, is nothing but business to business (B2B) sale and purchase of goods model over the internet. E-procurement enables widely spread buyers and suppliers of goods to come together, interact, and perform purchase transactions directly over the Internet. E-Procurement gives businesses the ability to compare supplier prices, quality of services and various other aspects of the products.

The information technology (IT) sector has very well adapted to the ongoing change in the needs of businesses. It has helped many businesses by providing electronic solutions and internet based solutions for their supply chain networks to operate efficiently. We know that, procurement is an important function in any organization with its direct impact on the ‘productivity’, the most strategic objective of any business and has also had its share in the global e-transformation. Now, it has very promptly changed its form to a new concept called ‘E-procurement’.

E-procurement, one of the major aspects of e-commerce, is still very new to many businesses around the world however it is now catching up in the race as many businesses are beginning to realize its importance. But the transformation from conventional procurement to e-procurement has done great benifit to businesses in achieving their strategic objectives and targets.

Over the last decade in Pakistan, there has been a remarkable increase in the specialized supply chain services through IT enabled systems for the supply chain sector. This is a very good example in the industrial sector of an organization benefitting after shifting on an ERP and E-procurement system is the Polyester Fiber Business, of ICI Pakistan Limited.

Why E-procurement?

1.Cost Reduction

Costs can be reduced by structuring supplier relationships improvising systems to reduce external expenditure thereby improving quality and supplier performance. E-procurement solutions made it easier for purchasers to buy ‘on contract’; increasing buying leverage with key suppliers.

E-procurement also makes work paperless. Also, reduces rework and errors.

Also, because of dynamic on-line pricing, vendors offer limited-time spot discount offers on excess inventory. Even a small reduction in purchasing expenses can yield significant savings for large organizations.

2. Transparency of Expenditure

Central tracking system of transactions enables full reporting of requirements, purchase, processing of orders and payments. E-procurement also ensures compliance.

3. Increases Productivity

Internal customers acquire the items from an approved items catalogue through an online procurement system. Thereby, relieving the burden of low value transactions from the procurement staff, to let them concentrate on orders of strategic importance and on building supplier relationships.

4. Controls

Standardizing approval processes and formalizing workflows ensure authentication of transactions. Compliance to policy is also enhanced as users are able to quickly locate products and services from suppliers according to their preference.

5. E-procurement and technology

E-procurement advantages can only be fully realized when the systems and processes to manage it are in place. Software tools are needed to create the standard procurement documentation: electronic requests for information (e-RFI), requests for proposal (e-RFP) and requests for quotation (e-RFQ). These are proven methods to source goods and make the framework agreements that offer the best prices.

An adequate, fully integrated e-procurement approach is needed for overall success. Additional programs will provide the framework for the supplier databases management as well as holding vendor information and being an electronic repository. All these facilities cost money but this is fairly clear that cost savings are possible!

It pays for companies to spend money on e-procurement technology! 

Picture Source: Google Images

About Author:

Harpreet Kaur Dua is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at: harpreet.dua@spluspl.com