Breathing Business: A Nerve to link Customers

In today’s era of innovation and automation, understanding and nurturing customer needs has become more significant. In fact nurturing relationship with your customer will impact success rate of your business. If one is able to build a strong relationship with customer he can definitely acquire better business. 

However there are few factors which are taken into consideration when it comes to actual understanding the customer needs and wants

Transparency: Company – Client - Customer

To build customer loyalty:  Customer satisfaction matters because selling more to existing customers is easier and cheaper than finding and selling to new ones. Loyal customer will tend to buy more and more and eventually recommend your business to others. To gain customers loyalty we need to tell the customer what exactly we are doing for them with reference to any activities such as different offers on different product, membership card schemes for long term customers and their benefits. Parallel to it,

Remember customers in special occasion by sending them greeting cards which in turn build your relation with customer. 

To develop customer confidence: Customer confidence can be gained only if we deliver the required product to the customer. Parallel to it, if the customer is satisfied with the functionality of products what he desired than it will multiply the faith of customer on company and eventually the revenue.

To prevent customer complaints: Once the required project or product or the service is delivered to the client than it doesn’t implies all work has been done. Every project has to be checked under client controlled environment so that implementation as well as maintenance phase can be carried out successfully.

Positive v/s Negative word of mouth - Its impact on Business

Happy customers who get their issue resolved tend to tell other people about their experience. This is a way to significantly influence the word of mouth about your business. Don’t act as a nameless or faceless business; genuinely talk with your customers as a person representing the business. Ensuring all customer concerns are answered in a timely manner with a friendly and personal response.

On the other hand, an unhappy customer tends to tell more people about their bad experience. In fact, 13% of unhappy customers tell over 20 people about their experience. That’s a lot of negative word of mouth which in turn will definitely impact your business as well as create a negative image of your company. 

People before Profit

How much will that affect your business and its reputation in your industry? Customer satisfaction is tightly linked to revenue and repeat purchases. What often gets forgotten is how customer dissatisfaction negatively impacts your business. Diligently acquiring and analyzing customer feedback will help you identify if customers are actually happy with your product or services.

Satisfied customers may also recommend your products or services to other potential customers, increasing the chances for additional revenue and profit.

Deliver the committed

Committed is what that transforms a promise into reality so at the time of deployment make sure all the requirements has been covered in order to deliver an efficient product / application.

Customer delight – the wow factor

In today's business world, speed is essential. If your company delays in responding to customers, you're missing a huge opportunity to capture valuable insights and positive feedback. Don't give your competitors an opportunity to serve your customer better and faster than you can.

1 Always be timely

2 Always listen to your customers.

3 Give customers little things when they don't expect it.

4 Have policies, but always be flexible

5 Tell your customers how you will help them

Retain your customers

It is found that a ‘totally satisfied customer’ contributes 2.6 times more revenue than a ‘somewhat satisfied customer’. Furthermore, a ‘totally satisfied customer’ contributes 14 times more revenue than a ‘somewhat dissatisfied customer’.Satisfaction plays a significant role in how much revenue a customer generates for your business.

Customer satisfaction plays an important role within your business. Not only is the leading indicator to measure customer loyalty, identify unhappy customers, reduce churn and increase revenue; it is also a key point of differentiation that helps you to attract new customers in competitive business environments.

About Author:

Himanshu Suryawanshi 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: himanshu.suryawanshi@spluspl.com

Risk Analysis Techniques

Risk: Project risk can be defined as any uncalled event or a condition that, if occurs, impacts at least one of the project objectives. 

Risks can either be positive or negative. 

•  Negative risks are unwanted and potentially can cause serious problems      and spoil the project.
•  Positive risks, on the other hand, has a positive effect on the project such    as increasing the Rate of interest or finishing the project ahead of time.
•  Once the risks are identified, we proceed with their analysis. Risk Analysis  determines which risk factors will potentially have a higher impact on the    project and, therefore, should be managed by the stakeholders correctly.

The various techniques for risk analysis are as under:

1.Brainstorming

It is largely used in formative project planning, which helps in identifying and postulating risk scenarios for any given project. 

Process:
Considered as an effective attempt to help people think creatively in a         group without having a fear of being criticized by others. 

• Each member tries to build on the ideas given in preceding comments. 
• Criticism and disapproving verbal or nonverbal behaviors are not allowed. 
• The main intention is to encourage as many ideas as possible, which in turn, triggers the ideas of others.

Best suited - To identify maximum amount of risks possible in a project, as employees build on each other’s ideas, producing much greater output than they would as individuals.

2.Sensitivity Analysis

This is the simplest form of Risk Analysis. 

Process:

• Analysis of the effect of change of a single variable in a project is done, and a corresponding value is placed for the same in the project. 
• This uncovers uncertainty and risks for that project i.e. the sensitivity of the project is exposed.
• Generally, such type of analysis is performed only on those variables which have higher impact on cost and time to which the project is most sensitive.
• Best suited when attempting to determine the actual outcome of a particular variable, if in case it differs from what was previously assumed. The analyst can determine how changes in one variable will impact the target variable by creating different scenarios.
• For example, an analyst might create a financial model that will value a company's equity (the dependent variable) given the amount of earnings per share (an independent variable) the company reports at the end of the year and the company's price-to-earnings multiple (another independent variable) at that time. The analyst can create a table of predicted price-to-earnings multiples and a corresponding value of the company's equity based on different values for each of the independent variables.

Weakness: 
Variables are treated individually, which limits the combinations of variables to be assessed

3.Probability Analysis

Probability analysis overcomes the limitations of sensitivity analysis by mentioning a probability distribution for each variable, and then assessing situations wherein, any or all of these variables can be modified at the same time. 

This analysis answers 3 questions:

     • What can go wrong?

     • Severity of the potential detriment?

     • How likely it is to occur?

        Best suited when companies have a large amount of data.

4.Delphi Method

A panel of experts arrive at a convergent solution to any specific problem, so as to form a consensus of opinion. This is very useful for probability assessments of large and critical risk impacts related to the future. The first and most important step is to select a panel of people who have experience in the area of issue. 

It is advisable that the panel members should not know each other’s identity and hence the selection process should be conducted at different locations.

The responses along with opinions and justifications, are evaluated and a statistical feedback is given to each panel member in the next iteration. The process is ongoing, until group responses converge to any particular solution.

Best suited - For Business Forecasting as forecasts (or decisions) from a structured group of individuals are more accurate than those from unstructured groups. Also decisions are not biased which keeps any one person from having undue influence on the outcome.

5.Monte Carlo

The Monte Carlo method is simulation by means of random numbers. It is a simple yet powerful way of incorporating probabilistic data. 

Basic steps include:

(a) Define a domain of possible inputs.

(b) Generate inputs randomly from a probability distribution over the domain.

(c) Perform a deterministic computation on the inputs.

(d) Aggregate the results.

Monte Carlo method determines best case, most-likely, and worst-case estimates for any given scenario.

Example: 

Consider creating Most-Likely, worst-case and best-case estimates for the duration of a project. For each of the above mentioned scenarios, the project manager lists out the probability of occurrence.

• Most-likely scenario: Duration will be of three days (70% probability), but it can also be completed in two days (10%) or even four days (20%)
• Worst-case scenario: 60% probability of taking six days to finish, a 20%   probability each of being completed in five days or eight days.
• Best-case scenario: 80% probability to complete in four days, 5% probability to complete in three days and a 15% probability to complete in five days
• A series of simulations are performed on the project probabilities using the Monte Carlo Analysis. The simulation is to run for a thousand odd times, and for each simulation, an end date is noted.
• Once the analysis is completed, there would be no single project completion date. Instead a probability curve is formed which depicts the likely dates of completion and the probability of attaining each.
• With the help of this probability curve, the project manager informs the senior management of the expected date of completion. The project manager would choose the date with a 90% chance of attaining it.

Best advised - To use the Monte Carlo simulation to analyze the likelihood of meeting objectives, given project risk factors, as determined by our schedule risk profile. It is very effective as it is built on evaluation of data numerically and no guesswork is involved.

About Author:

Geetika Varma 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: geetika.varma@spluspl.com

The Agile - Scrum Framework

Scrum is framework which is based on agile principles, a framework that handles simple, complicated and complex software development. Scrum is based on continuous improvement in product and process. Scrum deliver software frequently (value), it showcase the hidden problems in systems development. In scrum project move forward with series of iteration that are called Sprints. Each sprint size is typically two to four weeks long. It is based on inspect and adaptive cycle. Produce product incrementally and iteratively, thus reduce risk and enhance visibility.

Scrum has simple roles, activities and artifacts.

Scrum Roles:   Below are the roles in Scrum

1 Product Owner,   2 Scrum Master, 3 The Team

1 Product Owner

•  Product Owner (PO) is client's representative, define features of product and decide release date and content
• Priorities features according to market value and be responsible for the profitability of product
• Accept or reject work items

2 Scrum Master

• Coach for scrum team , Enacting scrum values , Ensure team's productivity
• Build winning team, Apply agile principles and make system effective.

3 Team

• 5-9 Members team (Developer , Tester) , Self-organizing, High performance team
• Build winning product, Work collaboratively and share responsibilities, Cross functional team.

Scrum Activities:
1. Sprint Planning
2. Daily Scrum
3. Sprint Review
4. Sprint Retrospective
5. Product Backlog Refinement

1 Sprint Planning:
       Goal: Team to plan and agree on backlog items they can complete and confirm the tasks required        to support acceptance

Product owner present the backlog items in priority order for review

• Review and clarify user Backlog items/stories
• Breakdown larger stories and each story into task and acceptance criteria
• Task are estimated in hours by team, Developer and tester assigned to task
• Process continue until all available hours are used for the sprint.
• Output of sprint planning is be Sprint backlog, Estimated tasks etc.
• Duration: 4 Hours for 2 weeks sprint , Who: Scrum Team, Scrum Master, PO, When: Beginning of the Sprint

2 Daily Scrum:
Goal: Plan for the day, Inspect and Adapt daily towards reaching the sprint goal.
Description:

• Daily development Team standup for 15 minutes in circle and talk only on three points
• What I did since last daily scrum meeting?
• What I am planning to work on today?
• Impediments (Issue/blocker) if any?
• Scrum master protect the team and facilitate for being effective.
• This give an opportunity to team to inspect and adapt daily on the sprint goal.
• Who: Scrum Team, Scrum Master, When: Daily throughout the sprint , Duration: 15 minutes maximum

3 Sprint Review:
Goal: Get feedback on product development. Inspect and adapt on the product feature.
Description:

• During this meeting team demonstrate 100% completed work.
• Scrum master facilitate the environment.
• In case of new request, Product owner (PO) note and updates the product backlog as required.
• Product owner is final decision maker on acceptance.
• Duration: 2 hours for a 2 week sprint, Who: Scrum Team, Scrum Master, PO, Stakeholders, When: Last day of sprint

4 Sprint Retrospective:
Goal: To inspect and adapt to become more effective and efficient on process, people, culture aspect.
Description:

• Participation in the discussion to inspect and adapt as scrum team.
• Scrum master play vital role in sprint retrospective, Scrum master bring in the culture of openness, trust and respect as people discuss the improvement areas, facilitate and focus on improvement and changes that pointing fingers at others.
• This is platform to scrum master to help team resolve ineffectiveness in the systems
• Inspect and Adapt: Try everything that makes sense, reject things that didn’t work even after repeated trails. Shape your culture, process and practice.
• Duration: 2 hours for a 2 week sprint, Who: Scrum Team , When: Last day of sprint

5 Product Backlog Refinement:
Goal: Keep product backlog items ready, uncertainty to certainty
Description:

• Product owner provide clarity on each product backlog item (All uncertainty clarified into certainty )
• Product owner Update product backlog. 100% be present and involve all team members
• Team understand, carefully listen to need of product owner, understand the acceptance criteria. Help product owner to order the backlog.
• Duration: 1-3 hours depending on the team’s need. , Who: Scrum Team, Scrum master, PO, When: Continuous process, in between the sprints.

Scrum Artifacts:
Below are Scrum Artifacts.
1) Product Backlog,   2) Sprint Backlog, 3) Product Increment

1 Product Backlog
This is an ordered list of ideas for the product, which can come from the product owner, team members, or stakeholders. A description and estimate of effort complement each product backlog item.

The product backlog is ordered to maximize the value delivered by the Scrum team. The development team’s work comes from the product backlog, and nowhere else. Every feature, enhancement, bug fix, documentation requirement, every bit of work the team does comes from a product backlog item.

The product backlog may begin as a large or short list. Typically it begins short and becomes longer and more defined as time goes on. Product backlog items slated for implementation soon will be "refined," which means they will further clarified, defined, and split into smaller chunks. Though the product owner is responsible for maintaining the product backlog, the development team helps produce and update it.

2 Sprint Backlog
The sprint backlog is the list of refined product backlog items chosen for development in the current sprint, together with the team's plan for accomplishing the work. It reflects the team's forecast of what work can be completed. Once the sprint backlog is established, the development team begins work on the new product increment.

3 Product Increment
Every sprint produces a product increment, the most important Scrum artifact. A product Increment is the "goal line" for each sprint and, at the end of the sprint, it must:

• Be of high enough quality to be given to users
• Meet the Scrum team's current definition of done
• Be acceptable to the product owner

Scrum Information Radiators:

Task boards:

• Task boards allows transparency, display what is the live status of the teams work and focus area
• Simple task board has backlog , To-do, in progress and done status
• There are various format
• Team design their best “Information Radiators” that helps them in self-organizing

Burndown Chart:

• For current sprint, it shows  the total estimated work remaining for the entire forecasted sprint backlog against time
• Updated by team , regularly  and continuously
• Independent of the work, it represents total remaining estimated time to market to achieve sprint goal

About Author:

Kshitij Yelkar 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: kshitij.yelkar@spluspl.com

Customer Relationship Management

All the companies want to increase their rate of sales and quality of their services/products continuously to higher and higher points. 
Hence, nowadays, it is almost impossible to unlink CRM and success of the business.

Now, let’s understand what exactly is Customer Relationship Management? 

Peter Drucker rightly said “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.” this is exactly what CRM is all about!

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an approach to manage a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves use of technology to organize, automate, and sync sales, marketing, customer service and technical support.

Broadly, it’s the relationship between the organization and its customers. Customers are the backbone of any organization, be it a global corporation or a small trader with a handful of regular customers.

Successful organizations make use of three basic steps to build customer relationships:

• Decide on mutually satisfying goals 
• Set up and maintain customer rapport
• Generate positive feelings in the organization as well as for the customers

1 CRM conditions
To have a good CRM, we need to consider set of conditions such as- wants and needs of both the parties:

• For organizations- Make profit to survive and grow
• For customers- Good service, quality products and an acceptable price

2 Need of CRM

• To increase profit- By providing better services to customers than our competitors
• Reduced costs, wastage, and complaints
• Reduced staff stress as services and relationships improve 
• Instant market research, as customers give us direct and constant market feedback on our products, services and performance, far better than any market survey.

A good CRM grows our business due to following reasons:

• Customers stay with us longer
• Referrals to new customers increase, from increasing numbers of satisfied customers 
• Organization’s service flows are more efficient as teams work happily 
• Organizations should aim to be more customer-centric. 

Let’s understand this better with a simple example: 
Previously, the old viewpoint in the industry was: 

• ‘Here’s what we can make – who wants to buy our product?’

But now, the new viewpoint in the industry is:

• ‘What exactly do our customers need?’ and
• ‘What needs to be done to be able to produce and deliver it to our customers?

'This is a significant change of pattern in terms of how we look at our business activity.

3. Benefits of effective CRM
There are significant business benefits that flow from an effective, integrated CRM approach. These include:

• Costs reduce (effective and efficient working)
• Customer satisfaction
• Growth in numbers of customers
• Maximization of opportunities (due to referrals, increased services, etc.)
• Improved access to a source of market and competitor information
• Highlights poor operational processes
• Profitability and Sustainability

Basic underlying principle to a good CRM:

• Organizations who have momentary relationships with customers consequently, have to shell out a lot of money in finding new customers.
• Hence, relationships with customers should be – 
• Continuous
• Cooperative, and
• Made for the long term.

The cost of keeping existing customers is a tiny fraction compared to the cost of acquiring new customers!


About Author:
Geetika Varma 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: geetika.varma@spluspl.com

Application Support Life Cycle

Following phases of application life cycle:

     1. Service Strategy

     2. Service Design

     3. Service Transition

     4. Service Operation

     5. Service Improvement

Service Strategy

Organization makes a plan to manage costs and risks associated with starting any new service or changed service. Within this plan, organization performs the following:

· Set Up Expectations For Serving Customer

· Budget & Financial Performance Plan

· Opportunity Analysis

· Operational Process Requirements 

    Service Design

Based on requirements obtained in the Service Strategy stage, new services are required to be designed and developed. For example, make a service according to client agreed on expectation of service such response time of issue and change request. Following things are included in design phase:

· Statement of Work (SOW)

· Service Level Agreement (SLA)

· Operational Process Requirements

    Service Transition

During transition for new or changed service into operation phase, make a plan to set the operation capacity and structure of application support team. In this plan, define a set of work processes for team to teach how work will be organized and managed. For example, plan how many people will be part of the support process; give them idea about work process etc.

Following things are included in the plan:

· Team Operations Documents

· Application Knowledge Documents

· Operational Work Processes

    Service Operation

The application support team needs to perform day-to-day operational activities in order to provide a service as per statement of work agreed in a service level agreement. Service measure with the help of following reports:

· SLA Report

· Work Event Status Report

· Time Usage Report

· Resource Performance Report

    Service Improvement

Once service set up and it is on track, needs to improve process in order to improve processes efficiency and reduce cost. Based on status reports, check the gaps and improvement area and try to fill it. For example, make optimum use of resources resulting in improved efficiency and reduced cost.

Application support life cycle provides a roadmap for improving and implementing Application Support in terms of processes, outcomes

About Author:

Deepak Borole 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: deepak.borole@spluspl.com