Relevance of IT Enabled Self Service Desk

Have you ever thought of a mechanism, which really motivate employees to express their issues ASAP and get it addressed within a few hours, end to end online?

A pent-up issue of an employee, sometimes, a silly one could even cause serious damage in employee’s relationship with peer/boss.  Trends and technology made rapid changes in organisational culture, the way people work and certainly the employee expectations too.

image courtesy: bottled_void@flickr

Unlike Personnel Administration Department in 80’s or 90’s, we can see a proactive HR Office, today. However grievance handling is a very tricky state of affair and if not handled with utmost care, this could affect the overall rating of HR Office and even derail the business performance.

We can not miss the classic case of such an innovative initiative, successfully executed by an Indian Technology Company, as part of a great HR Initiative “Employee First Customer Second”.

Prof. Gary Hamel, in his blog HCL’s Extreme Management Makeover, Prof. has pointed more details of a smart service desk, where an employee open a ticket to express a complaint and route to an internal staff member for resolution.

If this can work with a huge billion dollar global enterprise, why not rest?

Let’s see how we can achieve a self service desk in any organisation

1. Identify all service categories (Eg:- On-boarding, Payroll, Cafeteria, Logistics, IT)
2. Standardize Service Level Agreements (Eg:- When a service ticket is raised, first resolution will be given in 1 working day)
3. Find first level owner for each service category (Eg:- Accounts Officer for Payroll, Transport Manager for Logistics)
4. Find Escalation Manager for each service category (Eg:- HR Manager for Payroll)
5. Identify a person who monitor complete service desk transactions, generate reports and come up with trends and inferences
6. Prepare a simple SOP for self service desk and circulate among employees
7. Ensure necessary process orientation to employees, before starting the service desk

It could create huge paper work and further administrative hurdles, if decides to implement the self service desk, manually. So my strong recommendation is to go for an IT enabled self service desk.

For automation, I would suggest not to get into in house legacy system development. Greytip Online could be a good choice. You may explore and identify couple of similar tools, evaluate and finalize the most suitable one for your organisation and roll out..

Is SAAS just hype? Where is business and show me the money!

Software as a service is no more Beta. Even though this grow at a relatively slow pace, SAAS has been considered as a competitive line of business in India.

Availability of potential customers, substantial data to show the money, persistent innovation, interest from global technology giants and venture capitalists made this byproduct of cloud computing, very attractive.

Evolution of Greytip Online - India’s most popular online payroll software , True POS - the leading point of sale tool on SAAS, Freshdesk - the fresh and cute online Help desk software and growing popularity of Salesforce, Trello and Deskaway are giving enough proof that SAAS is viable in India.

As per the article Public cloud gains momentum in India, cxotoday.com finds from Gartner "the biggest segment of the market is Software as a Service (SaaS), having 36 percent of the total cloud service market. Out of the 233 billion INR that will be spent on cloud computing between 2013 and 2017, 89 billion INR will be spent on SaaS"

E-readiness/broadband penetration plays an important role for SAAS. It would be futile to focus on geographical segments, where Internet connectivity is still, a bottleneck.

As published in Track.in, according to 2010 statistics, 10 million broadband subscribers are active in India, of which Maharashtra leads the list with over 1.8 million subscribers followed by Tamilnadu (1.3 million) and Karnataka (1.13 million). Kerala has the highest broadband density with 0.7 million subscribers.

These 15 segments (states) could be ideal destinations to pitch in for SAAS

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for 80-90% of the Indian SAAS business, today. By considering the typical business culture and geography of India, segment specific sales models could augment the acquisition process. If we plan segments based on nature of business, 9 segments could be created across India.

The average selling price and sales model are interdependent as far as sales growth is concerned. When target a large segment with a simple tool, low selling price with self service sales model would be suitable.

 

When target a very small segment, self service sales approach may not be suitable. We may need to adopt transactional sales and if the tool is complex, then enterprise model. However in both the cases, it would be risky to go with low average selling price.

Business support applications may be showcased across segments. However for tools like help desk, point of sale, ecommerce platform etc., service providers may further focus on specific segments

Segment 1	IT, ITeS, KPO, Consulting & eCommerce	1500C	Segment 2	Factories & SSIs	50000C
By considering the huge penetration of software products/ services and technical knowledge of potential buyers, customer acquisition could be relatively effortless here. However exposure to enterprise tools and legacy systems may make them more demanding and quite unrealistic in terms of SAAS offerings. If we achieve 10% of 15,000 units, it would be 1500 customers. Self service sales approach would be appropriate. Engagement is the key and keep the conversation going.			This segment is highly price sensitive.  Biggest challenge could be reaching the potential customer and we can not expect the stakeholders to carry portable gadgets, always and find the SAAS provider via Google search. If we take 10 million SSIs in India, 1 million firms are registered SSIs or SSSBEs. By considering the 1,00,000 factories, the segment can grow further. If we achieve a nominal 5% here, it would be a whopping 50000 customers. A mix of self service and transactional sales approaches would be appropriate. Engagement is the key and keep the conversation going.
Segment 3	Schools, Colleges & Training Centers	10000C	Segment 4	Hospitals & Diagnostic Centers	500C
General perception of education sector as 'non-profit establishment', stakeholders tend to bargain with vendors and pricing is critical here. Approximately 2,00,000 educational institutions could be in India. If we achieve a nominal 5% here, it would be a whopping 10000 customers. A mix of self service and transactional sales approaches would be appropriate. Engagement is the key and keep the conversation going.			This would be another potential segment where software penetration would be negligible except in Super specialty Hospitals. 5000+ units are functioning across India. 10% of this can contribute 500 customers. A mix of self service and transactional sales approaches would be appropriate. Engagement is the key and keep the conversation going.
Segment 5	Hotels, Restaurants & Resorts	250C	Segment 6	Courier, C&F, Packers/Movers, Shipping, Travel & Fleet Services	5000C
This would be another potential segment where software penetration would be negligible except booking or POS. 2500+ units are functioning across India. 10% of this can contribute 250 customers A mix of transactional and enterprise sales approaches would be appropriate. Engagement is the key and keep the conversation going.			This is one of the fast growing segments and SAAS can add value to business here. Reaching customers would be bit difficult by considering the line of business and non-tech savvy audience. There could be 1,00,000 service firms in this segment. If we achieve a nominal 5% here, it would be a whopping 5000 customers. A mix of self service and transactional sales approaches would be appropriate. Engagement is the key and keep the conversation going.
Segment 7	Retail Sector - Food, Apparel, Jewellery & Electronics shops	1000C	Segment 8	Real Estate, Infrastructure & PMC	500C
Branded retail chains and malls would be already running on legacy systems or ERPs. However we can find local super shops, retail chains, jewelries, exclusive garment showrooms, distributors etc. Reaching customers would be a challenge. If we achieve a nominal 10% of 10,000 such units, we would be adding another 1000 customers. A mix of transactional and enterprise sales approaches would be appropriate. Engagement is the key and keep the conversation going.			Small and medium builders, construction companies, architects, interior designers, project management consultants etc. would constitute another potential segment. This segment is vulnerable to market correction, then and there. Price sensitive segment and customer acquisition could be bit difficult. Approximately 5000 such establishments could be there. If we achieve a nominal 10% of this, we would be adding another 500 customers. A mix of transactional and enterprise sales approaches would be appropriate. Engagement is the key and keep the conversation going.
Segment 9	Other Industries	1000C
Outdoor Marketing, Agencies in Sales Promotion, Printing & Publishing, Clubs, Pizza Shops, Farms, Amusement Parks, Cable TV networks, Multiplexes etc. constitute another potential segment.  50000+ units would be functioning across India. If we achieve a nominal 5% of this, we would be adding another 1000 customers. A mix of self service and transactional sales approaches would be appropriate. Engagement is the key and keep the conversation going.

What is in SAAS for Small and Medium Enterprises ?

Meet Mr. Joye Gomez, 33 years old ambitious CEO of a SME in Bangalore - the FruitsNJuice fruit vendor.

Last year, during a cloud summit, I met this guy as he has been trying to get more insight on Greytip Online, the cloud based Payroll & HR software.

Probably, many of us may not even think of retailing fresh fruits & juice as an organized business. After masters in agribusiness and a short stint with a MNC, Joye Gomez started his first FruitsNJuice store in Bangalore with 2 employees, almost 3 years back. Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley got a special inclination towards hygiene and may be this could be one of the reasons behind the success of FruitsNJuice stores across the city.




Photo Courtesy : Original work of Ali Karimian, Creative CommonsCC BY-SA 2.0

By the time Joye Gomez reached 25 stores across the city with a staff strength of 60, FruitsNJuice managed to achieve a whopping sale of 500 fruit bowls and 750 juice packs, on an average from each store. 30% of sale is through phone booking and 70% over the counter.

Let's see what made Joye Gomez to visit the summit.

Huge number of transactions, maintenance of order details, verifications, real-time data analysis, JIT for fruits, preparation of salary and incentives, monitoring leave of absence and expense claims made the life of Joye Gomez and his Accountant, extremely difficult and reached a level where they have only two options – add more staff for accounting and administration or use information technology to streamline and simplify the process.

As FruitsNJuice has been operating with a moderate margin, Joye Gomez is not in so favor to spend again on staff. Being an avid reader, he had somewhat idea on benefits of SAAS tools for Small Business.

For order management and point of sale, Joye Gomez identified true POS, as the best tool to go with. For accounting, as it is centralized, he has decided to go with the existing desktop tool for some more time.

Managing staff salary preparation and distribution is the next big thing. At the time of this transition, everybody get their paychecks by 5th and to achieve this, 3 people including Joye Gomez had to spend day and night for a week to crack numbers across spreadsheets. To look after entire statutory aspects, he has appointed a consultant too. However, staff accountant will be spending even preparing reports for the consultant.

It was when Joye's Chartered Accountant referred Greytip Online, he has signed up for a trial account and evaluated the services for a month. Joye, by seeing some of the customer references , almost decided by the time itself to use Greytip Online. Incidentally, I have got the opportunity to meet this young entrepreneur at the summit and spend half an hour and explain the benefits, key features and how to go ahead.

During the discussion, I have noticed that Joye Gomez has no website and not done much in social media. I recommended him to try Google Apps, Google Local Business Center, Facebook & Twitter to promote among Gen Y. As Joye has shown interest in creating an online portal to sell, guided him to buildabazaar, where an e-commerce site can be hosted without any investment.

Today, FruitsNJuice is a 125 people company with 50 stores and an amazing turnover of 500 million... and expansion plan across cities. According to Joye Gomez, the overall expense towards software services across the shops is around 75K per month and for FruitsNJuice, it is worth spending.

Here is the overall satisfaction index of this CEO upon SAAS tools

1. No deadlock in order management, perfect POS and real time data analysis
2. 100% just in time (JIT) for fruits and related consumables
3. 5% orders getting generated from e-commerce portal
4. Complete and seamless document management and mailing
5. Real time CEO Dashboard for staff details
6. Perfectly streamlined one point reference for staff info
7. Staff attendance and leave of absence at mouse point
8. Preparation of staff salary, statutory returns and payslips in minutes
9. Perfect statutory compliance - ESI, EPF, IT and PT

Joye's own words "These tools are giving me the freedom to manage my business without visiting my stores frequently. I am not writing fat cheques for store supervisors or techies to manage technology. In fact, I myself processed the salary, when my staff accountant was on medical leave..." broadcast how SAAS tools helped the CEO of a Small and Medium Enterprise to expand business, improve the effectiveness and add further value to business.

Disclaimer: FruitsNJuice, Joye Gomez, Cloud Summit are not real names/events. Resemblance to any business is purely coincidental 

15 Points to focus, while writing Requirements Specification

1. Requirement specification requires a simple and rational structure, with a version track. Traceability is one of the success factors for any requirement specification. For major specifications, Requirement Engineer may use a spreadsheet
   

2. Each requirement shall be recorded accurately with the prime objective of not loosing the specific characteristic of the requirement.
   

3. Ensure single interpretation for each requirement, recorded and shall be precise, easy to read, clear, short and explicit.
   

4. Use simple and natural language, across requirement specification. However, Requirements Engineer can not avoid domain specific terms, which customer follows to explain the business case or problems. Here, explain the term under glossary
   

5. Prime objective of Requirements Engineer would be to state, requirements and deliverable to customer without ambiguity.
   

6. Giving emphasis to ‘How’ may make Requirements Engineer and user, biased and this may even damage the actual requirements flow and scope of the design. However, Requirements Engineer can include ‘How’ with less emphasis on technology, tools and design.
   

7. Each requirement shall be recorded with a specific purpose and commitment. Better to use 'shall' in sentences, as this can indicate commitment.
   

8. Be objective, when write requirements and never assume or undermine anything as far as requirements are concerned.
   

9. Requirement engineer shall give focused attention towards the specification and ensure that the problem domain has been understood, completely and then recorded functional/non functional requirement, system performance and constraints.
   

10. Requirement Engineer shall use references, scenarios, diagrams and tables, wherever necessary to explain requirements, rationale and background.
    

11. The requirement specification shall be verifiable. To make it verifiable, ensure that each requirement statement has been written with utmost care and once the product is delivered, customer can associate a feature with the requirement and verify the same.
    

12. Requirement Engineer shall specify the function envisaged by the user with performance expectations for each and every requirement. However, avoid getting in to technology, tools or physical attributes of the product under design and cost

13. The requirements shall be testable. So ensure that there are some quantitative mechanisms to test the requirements, recorded. More specifically, there shall be a scope for writing one or more test cases for each of the requirements

14. Avoid the following, while writing requirements

> Refer Tables/figures, which are not part of the specification
> Refer telephone calls/correspondence, which is not in record
> Incomplete sentences, which ends with and/or, etc.
> Words like normally, wherever applicable, may be, nominal, approximate, peak, achievable, coincidence, latest
> Passive sentences
> Words, which can't be tested - usually, reasonable, highest, earliest, flexible, adequate, efficient, possible, faster, worst, often, acceptable, compatible
> Conflicting terms/characteristics
> Repeat a requirement, more than once in the specification
> Use of a pronoun (Eg: - it), without an explicit reference
> Logical inconsistency and conflicting business logic

15. As any product can be made with in certain budget with the available tools, technology and resources, care shall be given to consider all these aspects, while write a requirement specification
    

Economies of Scale, Idli for a rupee, Software Service for Re.1...

As quoted in wikipedia, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to size, with cost per unit of output generally decreasing with increasing scale as fixed costs are spread out over more units of output. Often operational efficiency is also greater with increasing scale, leading to lower variable cost as well

Chennai Corporation’s 100s of budget restaurants run by women self-help groups offer idli for a rupee, sambar rice for Rs.5 and curd rice for Rs.3 Amazing right?

Photo Courtesy : Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 Original work of Leon Brocard

Certainly leadership of the state chief minister and some amount of government subsidy would be hand holding this initiative for some period. However the other element of success is nothing but scalability.

Economies of scale and scope are factors that help to reduce the average cost of a product as the volume of output increases. For example, it could cost approximately Rs.10-15 million to install 100 copies of enterprise payroll software with database and necessary hardware for companies with average manpower size 100. At the same time with Rs.3 -4 million, we could have achieved 100 instances of payroll when we adopt cloud based Software as a Service. The average cost in this case has reduced to 1/5.

Definitely there could be a question? Why should we adopt some features, which are readily available in the tool and compromise the current practice. Being the business owner or person accountable for operations, you have absolute right to seek this. However you should look at the feature, check how many companies are using it (500+ firms can not stick to a wrong a practice, right?) and end of the day evaluate whether to spend and customize it for you or use the global feature.

Traditional enterprise software deployment would be a time consuming activity, too exclusive and going to be a costly affair just like when you get in to a fine dine restaurant for dinner. Book your seat, take order, have starter, serve main course, find some pastry, bill, tips… If you have enough time and money and love to spend, enjoy it !!!

Let's look at the ready-to-eat shops, who offer standard food items (standard menu, quantity, quality and price) with standard service. Here just go, give the order, eat. 5 minutes, 30 minutes or 1 hour, it is up to you. As nobody cook exclusively for you and offer any special service, cost could be 1/10, enjoy it!!! Software as a Service (SAAS) is your ready-to-use shop for software and this delivery mode made software affordable for small business too

For a small and medium enterprise, maintaining the cash flow, expanding the trade horizon, improve the effectiveness and retain talent etc. could be truly business critical. However the most critical differentiators to any business is human resources and nurturing people to stay and contribute makes employee information, communication, time and discipline, compensation, expense claims, document management, report and analytics as equally important and strategic.

When you grow, you should rely on a good tool for automating basic human resources processes like employee information, leave of absence, time tracking, expenses and payroll and statutory. Advanced technology like cloud servers and software as a service made the service delivery, amazingly scalable

Here is the most critical and visible benefits of Software as a Service for Small and Medium Enterprises:

1. CAPEX - Zero capital cost as you do not require heavy duty servers, Tech Resources, Annual Maintenance etc.
2. Highly Flexible – Start up with less people, grow and add up more people on the go, start new units and so on. Whatever it could be no need to break your head for software service. SaaS is simply scalable
3. Access 24x7 - Software as a service is internet based and services can be accessed anywhere in the world
4. Private & Secure - No worries of database crash, data loss etc. Data will be stored in a data center and data will be maintained as per mutually agreed standard terms.
5. Seamless Upgrades - No need to buy additional hardware or further investments on infrastructure. Upgrades will be simple and periodic

*Software service for Re.1 is arrived at by computing the average cost of subscription per employee per day with a per month subscription charge of Rs.2995 for 100 employees

Saas Made Software Affordable For SMEs

Today, intelligent business applications like HR & Payroll, POS, CRM, Project Collaboration, Market Research, e-commerce portals etc. are affordable to Small & Medium Enterprises.Thanks to Software as a Service (SaaS) offers via cloud!

See the figure 1 for understanding SaaS value map

 

Let’s visualize Payroll process of a 25-30 people strong Tour & Travel Operations Company. Every month, Supervisors will forward the attendance report together with employee leave details duly signed by concerned Managers to Accounts Manager. Accounts will enter leave details in a register for record maintenance and cross verification in future, loan payments, deductions etc. Then Accounts Manager will update required information in a spreadsheet to calculate the salary payable to employees. Once the salary statement is ready, will take a print out and get the signature of General Manager and forward to Cashier for payout. Next to this Cashier will print payslips. As they are not paying salary through bank account, they will take payslip printouts in duplicate. During salary disbursement, Cashier will collect one copy with the signature of employee and filing purpose.

Now let’s see how a good Online Payroll can make the entire process, simple and enable the Accounts Manager to save time & money and provide so much value add to the process.

1. Connect to Internet, visit SaaS provider’s website URL <30 seconds>
2. Check & verify features, clientele, pricing and testimonials <5-10 minutes>
3. Verify security and privacy policies, terms and conditions <5-10 minutes>
4. Sign up for trial for one month <5 minutes>
5. Set up company information, finish basic configuration <2 minutes>
6. Enter basic employee information including employee’s bank account details (can create a digital file and handover to company’s bank, so that they can transfer the salary to employees) direct entry or data import using a spreadsheet <15-30 minutes>
7. Setup previous months' payroll <5-10 minutes>
8. Define salary structure, import salary information for the last 3 months in the system <15 minutes>
9. Create current payroll month and update salary details <10-15 minutes>
10. Process payroll <1 minute>
11. Generate salary statement, check/verify accuracy of payroll, compare differences (if any) with last month’s payroll <10 minutes>
12. Generate statutory reports and returns <10 minutes>
13. Generate Bank Transfer file and forward to Bank for salary transfer <1 minute>
14. Release payslips to employees, either via employee self service or through mail <1 minute>
    

That is all. We have processed payroll, distributed payslips, generated reports/returns and archived data without any additional efforts. Sounds simple and amazing, right? 

Cost of software for 25 people could be less than your monthly grocery bill. So with priceless value additions in business process, you got incredible cost advantage too.