Smart-sourcing strategies: Technology, Business, Finance

6 Tips to Reduce Customer Support Cost by leveraging Software QA

This post was published earlier, but I trhought it is worth re-visiting some of these tips again.

One of the clients of my company for whom we provide software development solutions, last month asked us if we could help them bring outside perspective to their growing business challenge - over the last 4 quarters or so company was witnessing a steady uptick in number of support calls and time per support call. This was putting burden on their smaller support staff and also creating some not-so-positive noise among customer base. Question was what's causing uptick and how to reduce that number while enhancing customer satisfaction.

Many small and midsized software companies are dealing with this issue. With the challenging economic and business conditions, its not only the service / product provider companies, but often their end clients are also going through organization changes which sometimes affects the provider companies. Here are some factors that our team came up with, although only few of these were actually applicable to the client company.

1. Loss of key knowledge resource: Losing an experienced resource within the company often creates bottle neck for the rest of the supp rt staff. If that resource is still within the company but only reassigned to another team then making that resource available on-demand, as need basis can be very helpful. Knowledge transfer and training could also be arranged through lunch-n-learn sessions. If such resource has left the company then problem could be more painful. Best way to tackle such problem is to identify knowledge leadership within current support team or company to address immediate problems and then work on creating long term solutions. In some cases, contracting with an ex-employee(s) might also be a good option.

1. Lack of adequate QA / Testing: If your support team is getting higher than usual calls from your customer base, particularly immediately after your new release or a code change on which your developers work hard for months, then chances are proper testing was not done prior to the roll out.
   1. Unit testing performed by developers is not really a release quality testing.
   2. Ideally you should have sanity test and build verification test done on entire product (even to those areas which were not changed).
   3. Well defined test cases, test scenarios, test plans can also be very useful to ensure release quality. Mantra Technologies has well defined quality assurance guide lines for the product release which we highly recommend to all out customers.
   4. Software testing is an entire different subject and needs its own space, but this is one of the key reasons or lack thereof why you may see a spike in support calls and dip in customer satisfaction. Some of the testing approaches you should consider are:
      1. Functionality Testing
      2. Regression Testing
      3. Integration Testing
2. Lack of knowledge base: This is a common knowledge that your support staff (your customer facing staff) should be well equipped with all the tools and ammo they need to be more efficient and effective. Still, I find it surprising that many small and mid size companies fail to make use of commonly available tools.
   1. You can make Wiki forums available within the company where all employees can learn from and contribute to.
   2. FAQs on your website - this is a wonderful, first line of defense against some common problems or questions.
   3. You can leverage your company blog and HowTo sections with useful information.
   4. You can also make small, quick video (typically less than 5 minutes in length) and publish those on secure customer section on your website.
   5. If you have SalesForce or any other CRM tool in use, with few clicks, you can allow your customers to open a ticket and have it routed to appropriate support person (with some business rules.) If you don't want to invest in such tool, you can look at some low cost or free solutions such as zoho.
3. Change in Management, change in priorities: Many times a change in the management or change in priorities (as a reaction to outside events) may prompt changes in support structure. Even if all the changes start with a good intention, buy-in from the support staff is equally crucial to guarantee the enhanced customer support.
   
   
4. Years old, un-documented code base: How old is your code base? Are there any areas in your code that no one knows about but everyone is afraid to analyze? Many customers find documentation solutions from Mantra Technologies effective strategy to make the best of the old code. This well documented code and help files which are then made available to support staff further helps them to provide best customer service.
5. Lack of support and escalation process: How well your support staff, particularly newer members of your support staff, understands the gravity or seriousness of the customer issue. This is truer if your support operations are outsourced and even more so if to another country. 
   1. Do you have predefined consistent escalation processes? 
   2. Do you have proper training and measurement of support staff readiness?
   3. how customer focused, friendly are your first line of support staff?
   4. Does your support staff feel need to drag your developers into support issues more frequently?
   5. Do you have right measures of your support staff and more importantly are they aligned to your business goals? For example, if your business goal is to increase customer satisfaction then you cannot only measure the number of support calls handled / hour.

6.      Failure to understand changed customer expectations / users: Just like your company, there is a good possibility that your client's team has gone through some changes, too. May be they have lost a key resource who had a great knowledge of your application. And, now all of a sudden you are getting all the questions which that resource used to answer internally.

1.  How do you and how early do you identify a support issue from training issue.
2. How do you approach your customer and tell him to invest in re-training a new resource or do you avoid that to maintain a client relationship and instead burden your support staff?

For any software company, large or small, application support team is the ultimate brand and product ambassador. They are also your sales people because best service often results in to increased sales and vice-versa.

 

7 Common Mistakes Software Product Manager Should Avoid

While working for many years with software product managers and small / mid-size ISVs, I have seen time and again companies falling into traps on their way to new product development. Here I am trying to summarize some of those traps in one place:  

1 - Thinking too big - ‘Put all bells and whistles in first version’

"We don't want to let client know what we are up to, we will surprise them"
"We have enough experience, we will just go to the market with a full version with all the features"
There is always a lot of excitement at the beginning of a product cycle. Everyone, especially a product Manager, wants to give a killer, cutting edge, next generation product that will leave the competition in dust and make the this product numero uno in the market. This is the most common trap many company fall into. Partly because of the pressure of higher management, or sales & marketing folks, product management just tries to include all the features, bells and whistles in to the product at Release 1.
Such approach, thinking too big, eventually leads either to delays in product cycle or inferior quality or both. A better approach, instead, could be to start with a basic functionality first. Make the product work and let it do its core (only) function successfully with few basic, select additional features. Simple. Nothing complex. Rather than adding all the features, time and attention should rather be provided to evaluation, validation and experimentation of latest technology, platforms, scalability and ultimate user experience.

2 - Wrong adaption of a Global Model

Developing everything in-house, outsourcing an entire product development and applying in-correct global strategy all could potentially lead to high product development costs or inferior product.  

• Using offshore-only provider - All you are getting is a cheaper programmer with no meaningful on-shore collaboration. You should instead tap into a glocal (local consultants with global efficiencies) providers such as my company.  
• Doing all in-house - Easier to maintain and implement, but you limit fresh ideas and product cycle efficiencies.
• Outsource everything - your company needs to adapt to a product than other way round. This is most risky approach.
• Keeping Testing in-house - It has been proven that software testing is generally a non-core task of the product development cycle and often better accomplished by outside party. my company has large customer base where we do only testing of their product.  

3 - Work with offshore only provider (outsourcing 1.0):

“We are only looking for programmers at lower cost.”
“We have this existing relationship and we are set with them.”
When you hear yourself saying “we are set”. you really are in need of a fresher perspective and newer vendor. Offshore only providers often don’t have their roots in US. I sometimes call them utility companies. They don’t hear, see and experience same things that you and your client does and thus lack perspective necessary for deeper collaboration and better product development. Lot could be said on this point, but key is that you will have much better product if you collaborate with a vendor that is local to you or local to product’s end market, and also could deliver efficiencies associated with global model.

4 - Keep everything in-house:

“We do everything in-house”
“We have never worked with outside vendor. We have all we need.”
This strategy is easy to manage and often perceived as faster to implement. The downside of this strategy is that product team does not get outside ideas and perspective. There are many outside companies who may have done done good groundwork, framework which could be beneficial to your product. You could also tap into their experience of working with other product companies similar to yours. But by keeping everything in house you are limiting yourself from any such ideas and experience.

5 - Outsource everything - Even innovation?:

“We want you to develop a complete solution for us. do your own R&D”
“You figure out the what, how and which technologies, methodologies and algorithms. Just give us a product that meets our requirements.”
This is a commonly followed approach in smaller companies where they lack technology resources to developer a new product. An outside company may not know your client base as well as you do and, furthermore, they may not have as good innovators as they may have developers. This approach should be avoided in all circumstances, especially when you are developing a new product. Such companies should seriously consider partnering with a local consultant who also can also bring global teams to the product development.

6 - “Do it just like how the old application does”

“It should work exactly like how the old app works. No changes at all!”
“Why would anyone want to do it differently, I don’t understand.”
This is a common mistake for companies that already have an older product out in the market and intend to re-engineer the same to the newer technology. Part of the reason of this strategy is customers are already familiar with the product and company don’t want to lose those customers because of newer product. You need to understand that while you can maintain same functionality, fundamental user experience should not necessarily be the same, it could be much better. After all, you want your next generation product smarter, scalable and simple.
Once I worked with a company that was working on a new .NET version of their legacy product. The only requirement, often, that was provided to the development team was a screen-shot of an older COBOL based system. “Here do it just like this one” was often the whole requirement. Needless to say that, this product didn’t turn out as expected.  

7 - Minimum client involvement

 “Let’s wait before we let them know what we are up to.”
“Let’s surprise them with the new version, instead of taking their time now”
I have seen many companies developing a product in relative client isolation i.e. without a client involvement. This is where higher management needs to step in to invite some of the key clients in and have them their say in the product’s newer version.
Recently I was talking to an CEO of a product company. Among many things, we were discussing client participation in the new product release he had planned. He, refreshingly, surprised me when he said they wanted to build only a small skeleton version first and take it to the road show with potential clients in turn asking them for their participation, feedback for next versions.
This is the best approach for a product development and also to ensure client acceptance to the new version.
 

 

[Press Release] Mantra Technologies To Deliver Cloud Computing Solutions To Insurance Company

Sep 10, 2010 - Mantra Technologies, a SaaS and product development company based in Alpharetta GA, today announced new partnership with a leading Auto Insurance company from Atlanta to build next generation SaaS based solutions for its customers. Under this partnership, MantraSys will provide complete re-write of an older system, which is insurance company's core application. the new solution will be developed with Mantrasys's mSource methodology and will cover all phases of the SDLC. Mantra's global team will collaborate very closely with client's local team to develop user friendly, intuitive cutting edge application. New application will include features such as Customer Relationship Management, add-on sales, real time access to outside interfaces, Dashboards and graphs, Reports and Business Analytic, etc.   "We are very excited about this partnership. This partnership is direct result of Mantra's focus and offerings designed for SMBs" said Hemant Panse, CEO of Mantrasys. "Our SMB clients find Mantra's value proposition unbeatable in terms of cost, turn-around-times and quality.  Larger service providers cannot match our value because of their overheads and non-practical scale of economics. On the other hand, with changes in business environment, offshore-only companies cannot deliver to US customers directly because of their location and lack of understanding of customer requirements. Mantra bridges this gap by providing quality consulting, proximity, working very closely with its customers and delivers superior results through strategic partnerships." Mantra Technologies has successfully implemented many software and custom application development projects in Banking and Financial Services sector. Mantra teams have many man years of experience in developing complex accounting applications. Many of applications that Mantra has developed use latest technologies such as .NET, web services, SSRS, Data ware housing, SaaS and cloud computing. Within BFSI, Mantra has deeper domain knowledge and experience particularly in - Collection Software, EDI Exchanges, Data Mappings and interfaces, Formats and translation, Accounting, Reporting, Legal custom software for attorneys, Highly secured, SAS70 compliant apps, Reports and BI, Custom Reports and Dashboards, Data mining, integration and transformation, Quality Metrics, Scorecards, Benchmarks Mantra's approach to Strategic Outsourcing is relationship based, technology oriented, delivery focused and knowledge centered. The underlying philosophy speaks for enhancing value and ensuring customer delight. It is this philosophy and the commitment of Mantra's management that has resulted in enticing diverse organizations enters into long-term partnership with Mantra, and thereby successfully reaping the consequent rich rewards. The value addition and strategic advantages derived out of this outsourcing partnership with Mantra is well recognized by organizations. - An integrated service when it comes to offshore strategic outsourcing. It acts as a one-stop-shop for all the customers' requirements. - Choice of delivery and pricing models that suit the customers' requirements. - Performance based contracting, ensuring mitigated risks to the customers. - Accountable to the customers and always delivers what is promised. - Cultural diversity necessary for successful outsourcing. Well positioned from technology perspective, understands IT and business goals, share values, and information the same way the customer does. - Believes in creating and protecting IP (Intellectual Property) of its clients with strong commitment.   - State-of-the-art infrastructure with business continuity and disaster recovery mechanism that reduces the risk of its customers substantially. The risks & threats are mitigated with the help of Usage & Administration Guidelines, Security Policies & Procedures, Backup Policies & Procedures, Emergency Procedures, Regular Maintenance, and System Audits. For further inforamtion about Mantra's BFSI solutions, contact: Christine Summers, VP - Projects MantraSys 2650 Holcomb Bridge Road, Suite 650 Alpharetta GA 30022 Phone:  678 743 1120 web: http://www.mantrasys.com/solutions/financial-banking-sol ... email: christine@mantrasys.com About MantraSys: Mantra Technologies is IT consulting company based in Alpharetta, GA with a Global delivery center in Pune, India and partner delivery centers in Cebu, Philippines . Mantra offers wide range of end-to-end Software Development, Software QA and Project Management solutions specifically targeted for small and mid-sized businesses. For more information please contact christine@mantrasys.com or call 678 743 1120. # # #

SaaS and (traditional) Offshore Product Development

My company is a SaaS enabler and we provide offshore Outsourced Product Development solutions to ISV and product companies. Every week I get to  talk to number of of ISV companies on various issues related to product development and almost every time, increasingly over last few months, one particular question I get asked - "How does off-shoring works, or really helps, when we are offering SaaS over traditional products?".

Although my company offers specific tools and SaaS enablers to do exact same, I thought it would be helpful to visit the issues related to SaaS and Off-shoring. Can Software as a Service be developed same way as a product by offshore outsourced Product development companies?

Development Model
Traditionally most common SDLC model for software development has been Waterfall model -  you start with requirements and then move to Design, Development, Testing and Implementation. For a successful Offshore Development, the most important phase was requirements. As long as customer has documented all the requirements properly and has signed off, shipping those requirements off to India and get back the working code (after periodic sneak peek builds) was fairly easy task. In SaaS, waterfall model is not always the first choice.

Generally SaaS companies tend to follow Agile model where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing teams. Agile model is more suitable for SaaS where development cycles are much shorter.

Methodology
Processes, documentation and methodology standards such as CMMi levels that have been practiced and promoted by offshore companies are better suited for non-SaaS applications. They ensure predictable results and mitigate any possible project risks, which in non-SaaS product is greater because of more than 70% resources being invested in Design and Development phases.

In SaaS applications (1) project cycles are short (monthly or quarterly) and (2) goal is excellence more than perfection. Process maturity and documentation are great but using them in a same way as older model, generally proves to be hindrance in the name process (SCM audits) adherence.

Resources And Teams
Offshore companies typically start a project by sending out a Team Lead(s) or Project Manager(s) on-site for requirements phase and Knowledge Transfer (KT). They then build offshore team around this on-site team and put the whole structure in place. Again, very predictable and easy to plan on resource allocation, hiring.

Now imagine a software company in Austin, TX that wants to start SaaS project with a version one implementation within 4 months. Not much time for KT (and taking that knowledge back to India), documentation or process compliance. You have to hit the ground running. So, best approach for that company would be to find on-shore alternatives or enablers.  

Pricing
If you visit websites of most the SaaS products, and a typical small business uses 5-6 of those from email to project management to accounting reports, one common feature you will notice that pricing plans are visible on their website. As much up front they are on their pricing, they are upfront and non-conventional about vendor pricing. Yes, these companies want to reduce development cost (and off-shoring is one way), but more importantly they are looking for a value.

What more, than low cost, offshore providers can offer them? Blended pricing model, performance based pricing is also common these days which no all offshore providers are ready.

To conclude, what worked so well and ensured predictable success for offshore companies for last decade will not work as smoothly when US ISV companies follow SaaS approach and re-emerge from economic meltdown. In a flat world, where low cost advantage is diminishing, old processes are not as effective, product life cycles are shorter and innovation carries real meaning; offshore companies must innovate for their clients to succeed.

Great, Practical How-To's for a Current Day Entrepreneur.

Recently finished Mark Benioff's (Founder and CEO of a leading SaaS company salesforce.com) book Behind the Cloud. There are many great books based on the venture or a success of a leading company. But story that is told by those actually involved is always different and worth reading.

While reading, this book reminded me lot of Netscape Time a great one by Jim Clark, founder of Netscape - earliest .com company whose IPO on wall street was defined as one of the flatteners in another great book World is Flat.

How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world's fastest growing software company in less than a decade? For the first time, Marc Benioff, the visionary founder, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, tells how he and his team created and used new business, technology, and philanthropic models tailored to this time of extraordinary change. Showing how salesforce.com not only survived the dotcom implosion of 2001, but went on to define itself as the leader of the cloud computing revolution and spark a $46-billion dollar industry, Benioff's story will help business leaders and entrepreneurs stand out, innovate better, and grow faster in any economic climate. (from amazon.com)

But to anyone looking for ways to build a solid company with innovation, passion for creating sustained customer value - this books is a must read. There are some technical words that you may not understand if you are not already familiar with the domain. However overall this book is fun and easy read.

Engaging outside company for development? The correct entry point for offshore company.

Recently my company is talking with a new lead (a small manufacturing company) and possibly a business opportunity. They know for sure that all the development work needs to be offshored in order to reduce the cost structure. However they dont know how the new version to be designed or implemented. 

• Should it be SaaS?
• Just a re-write of older client/server app... just in a newer technology
• Web based app the applet

When we were discussing all these alternatives, client wasn't aware of all the technicalities or revenue impact possibly leading to new revenue streams (Pays as you Go, etc.). So they insisted on brainstorming sessions with our team. Which is good - because such discussions early on always ensure better successes rate for the new product.

Soon we will start informal brainstorming sessions leading to product vision and conceptualization. My company has a unique set of tools - which we call mSource - to make this phase more predictive and effective.

Here is a question, though - At what point smaller companies should engage outside (particularly offshore) vendor if they don't have enough expertise in-house? And, can purely offshore providers who lack onshore consulting presence can justifiably make early in-roads in to the project and still provide value to the clients?