As someone who seems to be in the airport almost as much as they’re home, I want to take this entry to just rant about some business processes and systems that need some investment.
Canceled Flights
– If a flight is canceled or delayed significantly, the system should automatically reconfirm everyone onto the next appropriate flight rather than have the desk agent try to manually handle these. They would simply provide boarding passes or make changes when the customer has a new preference.
Membership Lounges
– If you’re going to code share, then you should share customer data as well. Recently I was in the Frankfurt airport flying Lufthansa and as a Star Alliance Gold member through United, I wanted to use the First Class lounge even though I was only business class. The lounge said Star Alliance Gold members were welcome, but I had nothing that “proved” that because my boarding pass was with Lufthansa and thus didn’t show my credential. It was surprising to me that they couldn’t simply look me up to verify I in fact had earned the right to be in that lounge. Interestingly, on another visit, I had a United boarding pass that showed I was Premier Executive (Gold) and they argued with me as to whether that was acceptable proof. Someone needs to check the customer service processes for this loyalty program.
All posts by Darin Archer
Offshore Travel Agent
While the Internet has allowed for a significant number of transactions to be pushed out to the customer in the fashion of “self-service”, many of these are so time consuming and frustrating a business opportunity is created. One of the most frustrating “self-service” transactions in my opinion is that of air travel. When I am using company money, it’s relatively easy as I simply log into my company travel website, select my travel dates, let it validate corporate policies, attempt to find the lowest fare and… I’m done. I just click “Purchase” because it’s not my money.
Now, let’s take the situation where you’re trying to book a ticket home for Christmas. You likely live at least two connections from home and the ticket of course is close to the average monthly rent for a two bedroom apartment. So, you begin the battle of trying multiple websites and forums to uncover the top-secret, super limited, “lowest fare”. Really, you have no idea if you found the lowest fare, but after spending multiple hours and having seen potentially tens if not hundreds of fare options, you give up assuming you’re close enough. Well, I’d like to propose the airlines just change their customer pricing practices and not be such __________. But, I don’t expect that to happen any time soon.
In the mean time, there is a significant opportunity to “outsource” this task to someone else. Given the price of labor in other markets, a company could setup a call center to accept travel requests, research them and provide the customer with the “lowest fare”. The idea would be to take the pain out of the transaction along with the wasted time. A customer would call up or text message the service and outline their travel constraints (e.g., optional dates, schedule, etc.). That would be it. They’d then wait for a call or email confirming an itinerary and it would be done. If there were follow-up questions due to similar options, the service provider would call the customer and ask which option they’d like to go with. The self-service web transaction would then simply be to setup your profile with frequent flyer numbers, credit cards, etc. This of course could also all be done over the phone if you just didn’t want to deal with it online.
It would be like your own personal assistant. Imagine the possibilities. Restaurant reservations, sports tickets…
SMS City Guide Using Location Based Services
A few years ago I had the idea for SMS dating in a bar. The technology would enable people to have an online profile and then when they were within proximity to another person that matched their profile, the system would notify them. It would be great for coffee shops, bars, etc. It’s sense been built to some degree by some folks in Europe and Japan, but has not had much widespread use. Why match.com or a similar property hasn’t done this is curious.
Today I was scanning Citysearch.com for a suitable place to host my friends to meet up for my upcoming birthday. Citysearch is one of my more favorite city guides as it still adds some editorial content, but I still feel that the city guide space online has been dead for a while. There are a lot of great sites where businesses can either post their information for a fee or for free and there are of course the newspaper versions, but nothing that really provides the definitive source for where to go, where to play. Following this need to know what’s hot, other sites have popped up that are more focused on getting the masses to provide feedback, such as Yelp.com. These are great, but overall are noisy with their design and difficult to get through the rants and determine the legitimate insight.
Then it dawned on me, why couldn’t you combine mobile phones location based services and one of these sites. A wireless carrier for example could provide the data that says where users are located. You could then feed this data through a system like Google Maps and show where there are large clusters. Now, filter it through only a listing of known entertainment venues and you’d see what places are happening on any given night. Over time, you could track this by date and average it to see what places are really hot. You could even monitor trends and be able to illustrate what places are up and coming vs. dying out.
Calling India
The power to make international calls with your mobile phone at discounted prices – MobileCaller.com.
Today, many of us are finding ourselves working with people that are in countries all over the world. This poses a new challenge for telecommunications as we want to retain our mobility found with the age of cell phones, but can’t afford to use them to call internationally. Even if we charge those calls back to our employer, it’s not reasonable given the rates the mobile phone companies charge. So, oftentimes we’re stuck in our office to make those calls. Well, I’ve found a service that allows you to make these international calls from your mobile phone, home phone or any phone for very low international rates. Take a look at the various packages. I’m sure you’ll find one that works for you. I use this service for work and to keep up with friends that are all around the world.
Hyderabad (India) IT Parks Expand
The growth of office parks in India to support the outsourcing industry is tremendous.
Networking Two Routers
About a year ago I moved in with a friend of mine. Both he and I are serious geeks that pride ourselves on trying to be more aware of the latest technology trends and cool consumer electronics. It’s rare that we have a computer or technology problem that we cannot figure out how to resolve on our own. Of course, sometimes this involves countless hours on message boards and geek forums looking for the answer to some obscure problem we run into with our latest purchase. One that had stumped us (mostly due to laziness) was getting our home networking setup to support all the computers we have in the various rooms of a very old house with dense plaster walls. The challenge was getting the wi-fi to reach the back room where my computers were as we couldn’t easily run cat-5 all the way back. After literally purchasing every available wi-fi router at Best Buy, I settled with the Linksys WRT54GX2 as it seemed to have the best signal strength and speed. However, in order to get even this high power puppy to reach the back room, we had to move it into my roommate’s bedroom to be as close as possible to the back of the apartment. This created the challenge. In order to do this, we had to connect it to another Linksys router. In doing this we then created two separate networks, which made it so that we could play LAN games with each other nor share our iTunes libraries with each others computers that are connect to the two rooms entertainment system. As someone who long ago studied networking and was fairly skilled in this category, there were just too many settings for me to want to attack the problem. Then more recently I wanted to explore the gaming and torrent file sharing possibilities with my computer that was connected to the wi-fi router. After some initial monkeying with the setup, another friend of mine stumbled upon the “NAT Mode” feature in the wi-fi router. The small description on the routers administration site said, “NAT Mode: If the router is hosting your Internet connection, select Enable mode. If another router exists on your network, select Disable.” Awesome! This was it! Well, as you might imagine it wasn’t as simple as just selecting “Disable”. Initially we gave up, but I was now of the belief that I could setup this wi-fi router to just act as an access point allowing me to operate with one network. Today, I got back online and started doing some more research on it. I didn’t find the answer well documented, but found enough info and sequencing feedback to figure it out and now have my wi-fi router acting as an access point thus allowing all my computers to get an IP address from the original router and be able to talk to each other. Given the limited info I found, I figured I’d write up my story here in case there are others that need to setup the same. So, here’s the detailed step-by-step direction on how to configure your Linksys wi-fi router to act as an access point only.
Configuring Linksys Wi-fi Router to be an Access Point
- Go to the wi-fi routers administration site (http://192.168.1.1) (user is blank and password is admin)
- Under the “Setup” menu select “Advanced Routing” and choose “Disable” in the drop-down box to the right of “NAT MODE”. Then click “Save Settings”.
- Under the “Setup” menu select “Basic Setup” and enter a static IP address outside your source router’s IP range in the field “Local IP Address:”. (Note: Your source router is the one connected to your cable or DSL modem. To determine the IP Address range go to its admin site and look at the range under “Setup – Basic Setup”. Choose an address that is outside the range, but follows the first 3 sets of numbers e.g., 192.168.15.x – Write down the static IP you choose.)
- Select the “Disable” radio button for “DHCP Server:”, then click “Save Settings”. The router will now reboot and you will need to change the physical cables connection.
- Move the cable that comes from the source router to any of the Ethernet ports (It’s likely connected to the port labeled “Internet”.)
- Unplug the wi-fi router to reboot it so that it now passes through the other router
- Cycle your network connection on your computer that is connected to the wi-fi router. You should be given an IP address now within the range of the source router (e.g., my source router has the IP of 192.168.15.x). Test this new connection by going to any website.
- Change the SSID on your wi-fi router by going back into the routers administration site. To access this, you’ll have to enter the static IP you gave it in step 3 above. Go to the “Wireless” menu and under “Basic Wireless Settings” enter a new “Wireless Network Name (SSID):” that you will recognize when connecting (otherwise if someone else in your neighborhood has a Linksys router you won’t know which one to connect to). Click “Save Settings”
- Connect your computer to the new wi-fi SSID
- Go back into the wi-fi routers admin and navigate to “Wireless – Wireless Security” to turn on security so that only authorized users can access your network (optional)
Let me know if you get lost in my steps above.
Video On Demand
We’re no where near having video on demand! I’ve recently had two experiences that were really disappointing. The first experience was when I was in search of a movie. I had a friend coming over that wanted to watch Top Gun. I didn’t have it, but I figured how hard could it be to get. I have cable broadband, BitTorrent, Comcast OnDemand and there are a dozen other services on the web. So, here’s what I did. I needed the movie fast, so I went first to Comcast OnDemand thinking that would be the quickest download of the movie as the last time I used it the movie loaded almost instantaneously. However, when I went to the movie list, there was no Top Gun. In fact, there was a disappointing list in total. Next up, google… I did a quick search for “video on demand” to pull up some of the web options such as Movielink, Vongo, etc. I was on Mac Mini though, which is connected to a HD projection LCD (perfect for movies). None of these services either a.) worked with my Mac, b.) were easy to figure out what to do or c.) allowed me to just get one movie quickly and on demand. I think this is the key to these services being truly successful. I should be able to get a movie going without too much hassle. Let me start it with nothing more than entering my credit card. Don’t make me sign-up for a full account or require me to install a ton of new software. In the end, I went to the tried and true, BitTorrent. It’s slow as molasses, but I haven’t yet not found what I was looking for.
My second video on demand experience that was disappointing was purely due to a poor UI. A few friends of mine have told me that I have to watch this new HPO Series. Since I have Comcast HBO, I also have access to most of the HPO content on demand. This is a pretty good experience, but someone needs to sit on a couch and use it before it’s rolled out to the public. As I was watching the show, I had a phone call that I had to take. I put the show on pause and took the call. During the call, the pause kicked off and it went back to the main menu. At first I was really frustrated expecting that I would now have to fast forward through the show to get back to where I was. Luckily, it has saved where I was, but required me to clumsily go back through the menu to get back to the show (btw, have you noticed there’s no “back” button on these remotes!). The other issue I have with this experience is it leaves me at a screen that shows my “saved programs”. First of all I didn’t “save” them and don’t care to as I’ve already watched them. Secondly, make it easier for me to watch the next episode!
It’s slowly coming together though. We have the bandwidth, we have the technology and we have the content. The keys to getting it all to work are going to be a.) making it easy to access and b.) priced to sell.
Software Testing Resource
A software testing resource for IT Managers and Software Engineers.
Software testing has been my area of focus as an IT consultant. I have managed large software testing efforts and developed and implemented software testing strategies for large companies. Recently I have focused on outsourcing software test organizations leveraging resources globally. Having built a software testing center of excellence in India for a large software company, I have learned to adapt many software development and testing processes to meet the specific needs of my clients. This software testing related website will focus on helping IT managers understand how to improve their existing software testing processes and organization as well as what to consider when outsourcing software testing. I welcome comments on any of my entries and I will certainly adapt knowledge capital shared.
Selecting an Offshore Country for IT Services
As an outsourcing consultant working for Accenture, I am regularly presenting on “Why Accenture?”. However, today I was challenged with a new question from a client. Why China? As the IT outsourcing services industry continues to expand in both it’s offerings and locations, many companies are confused as to what locations they should leverage. It is important to keep in mind that location choice should be based on the project requirements. Everyone wants to minimize costs associated with IT. However, there are many more intangible costs outside of the standard hourly labor rates that can dramatically impact your projects success. For example, if you have a small project (~ 5-15 resources) that requires more significant real-time interaction over the course of a year, you will likely want to leverage an onshore or nearshore location. If you attempt to use an offshore location with these project requirements, you will likely find that the increased attrition (due to requirements of people to work grave yard shift) and telecommunications costs could outweigh the labor arbitrage. As the demand continues to rise exponentially, new markets become attractive for mitigating rising costs in the primary locations such as India. Having done some external research on the location topic, I’ve included my findings below for reference. Feel free to contact me directly if you have additional questions.
References:
- CIO Magazine | Offshore Map
- Ziff Davis CIO Insight | Top Spots For Global Outsourcing
- neoIT | Mapping Offshore markets update 2005
- Global Equations | Global Outsourcing Report 2005
- A.T. Kearney | 2004 Offshore Location Attractiveness Index
- Computerworld magazine | Knowledge Center – Outsourcing Special Report
- Sourcing Mag | Location Selection
- European Information Technology eXchange | Service buyers: Selecting the offshore location
- IAOP | Mapping Offshore Markets Update
- Carnegie Mellon University & Accenture | eSourcing Capability Model (eSCM)
- Accenture | Maximizing the Value of a Global Workforce
How much of IT should be outsourced?
As outsourcing has exploded in the last couple of years both in practice and mind share, many CIO’s have more questions than answers. For example:
- What percentage of my IT organization should be outsourced?
- How can I cut costs out of my organization while still delivery new capabilities to the business?
- How can I consolidate the number of vendors I use today, and how many vendors should I work with?
As an outsourcing consultant, I grapple with this question every day. And every day, with each different client or application space, I come to different conclusions. It seems there is a lot of variability to the answer depending on a particular IT organizations process maturity, industry, country, technology platforms and availability of local talent. Yet, today as I was catching up on my reading of CIO magazine, which was discussing the next generation of IT, I challenged myself to come up with a “simple” answer. Below is my first attempt at designing the IT organization of the future, if I were the CIO. I’d enjoy getting any feedback you might have on this idea.
CIO
Responsible for overall IT strategy and operations. This role and supporting team would provide overall leadership and direction.
Architects & Program Management
Managing the needs of the business and the resource bandwidth would primarily be executed by the outsourcing partner that would bring deep program and project management experience. Continuous evaluation of the IT operations technology platforms and future design would then fall primarily on employee architects that would feel ownership of their companies direction and capabilities. The outsourcing partner would then supplement with technology specific architects as needed.
Business & Systems Analysts
Driving the next generation of IT will require more business focused IT workers identifying and designing new ways to do business and generate top-line growth. The outsourcing vendor would provide support in methodology and domain or application specific experts that could rotate in and out to bring industry best practices from other clients.
Developers, Testers and Support Operations
Majority of workforce can be managed more effectively and less costly by a vendor with centralized development centers. Entry level employees would work with the vendor initially to build foundational skills for future roles.
