Background

QuantumIT was engaged by one of Australia’s largest call centre companies to develop a standard campaign management tool for use in a nationally distributed network of call centres for running inbound and outbound tele-services campaigns for a diverse range of clients.

Solution

QuantumIT designed and built a browser based application that utilises SQL Server database technology.  It allows the client to:

• Load customer data files
• Create calling scripts, agent questions and response recording
• Generate call lists and call-back prompts
• Create fulfilment tasks and execute printed, fax and email fulfilment jobs
• Monitor campaign progress and productivity, both through detailed reports and in real time
• Provide detailed and summary reports to clients and call centre management on the progress of the campaigns

At any one time the application would be supporting 100-200 interactive call centre users in a national network on many concurrent campaigns.

Benefits

• A generic, flexible system that can be configured to each campaign’s specific needs
• Rapid campaign development and deployment
• Intuitive user interface
• High client satisfaction
• Increased profitability

Background

The client had a modern automated payroll system, however the processes surrounding the payroll involving the collection of attendance records, days off, leave records etc were inefficient and error prone. Timesheet and leave records had to be collected from a variety of daily files compiled manually and sourced from various workforce management systems. QuantumIT was engaged to develop a tool to pre-process the data to determine the paid and unpaid hours for each employee depending on the rules of the contract with which the employee was associated.

The project objectives were to automate as much as possible the payroll data collection and processing to reduce costs and errors, to capture core staff data to form the basis of a performance assessment and reporting system and to report agent adherence to designated schedules.

Solution

QuantumIT designed and built a browser based application that utilises SQL Server database technology.  It allows the client to:

• Configure rules per centre/contract to determine the pay rate associated to a particular period of work. These rules can be configured for the following;
• Sick Leave Entitlements
• Days taken in Lieu
• Penalties applied to position for specific days/periods
• Overtime applied to position for specific days/periods
• Employees Seconded to alternate positions
• Etc.
• Monitor batch processing to ensure loads and subsequent processing tasks have been completed.
• Generate “Sign-On” sheets per centre based on the schedule information entered into each workforce system.
• Generate “Pre-Pay Slips” per employee for a given pay period associated to a centre. The “Pre-Pay Slips” will itemize per position, each paid and unpaid work type with the associated pay rate. Additional comments are added for clarification.
• Manage employee leave entitlements based on the receipt of medical certificates and leave forms.
• Manage non-agent rosters, i.e. Rosters for employees not present in the workforce management systems.

Benefits

The delivered solution provides:

• A generic, flexible system that can be configured for specific needs work site characteristics
• Independence from the Payroll and  workforce management technologies enabling a single integration point
• Intuitive user interface including wizard driven maintenance functions.
• High client satisfaction.
• Savings of 5-10 staff in each centre compared with the pre-existing payroll processing methods

Background

The client had a regulated requirement to generate complex business summaries to support a new monthly and quarterly reporting requirement to the Federal Government. The project had been going almost a year with the first reports due within three months. The vendors involved in the project had advised the client that the project would require at least another seven months making the delivery four months late. QuantumIT were engaged to develop the interfaces, database and reports three months before the due date.

Solution

This project involved processing very large volumes of data (> 90GB per day) from multiple source systems to create monthly and quarterly reports based on agreed metrics to satisfy Government reporting conditions. Design of the solution required analysis and interpretation of complex and ill-defined rules, and the design and construction of data feeds and aggregation processing to produce required statistical reports from most of the client’s principal core systems.

The data content and interfaces required detailed analysis and precise aggregation code to create the reports which were a key part of the organisation’s parliamentary reporting obligation.

Benefits

The project was completed and the reports were delivered on time by QuantumIT after the two previous vendors had advised the legislated delivery date could not be met.

Technology

Database: Oracle
Screens: Browser, PHP
Reporting: Crystal Reports

Background

QuantumIT was engaged to deliver the Data Warehouse and reporting systems for a substantial national business responsible for management of services provided to over 6000 corporate customers. The organisation was undergoing an operational systems transformation project and the DWH / reporting component was allocated to QuantumIT.

Solution

QuantumIT designed and built a Data Warehouse integrating data from 14 new and legacy data sources to provide a comprehensive business data reporting platform. The DWH provides consolidated reporting from a variety of operational systems including Siebel desktop, WFM, switch, billing, financial and call centre systems. Both day to day operational reporting and organisational performance analysis is supported through the system.

Reporting is provided via Cognos Reports and analysis through Powerplay cubes.

The system is the hub of the customer care business for performance and opportunity analysis and resulted in office savings of several hundred staff through better utilisation of call centre and support staff.

Benefits

A rapidly developed accurate and complete reporting system was available for use concurrently with the implementation of the new operational systems

The view of the business processes provided by the system enabled productivity gains in business operations which resulted in savings of several hundred staff and much improved visibility of customer support operations.

Technology

Database: Oracle
Screens: Browser, PHP
BI / Reporting: Cognos

Background

The client's Sales Force was using an Excel spreadsheet based program to demonstrate Return On Investment to customers. This tool was great in helping the Sales Force but had short falls in regards to auditability, version control, security, timeliness and accuracy of reference data. A replacement tool was required to cover these short falls.

Solution

The Return On Investment tool is refreshed with data every quarter. This is distributed automatically across the network to each installation. The reference data is encrypted for security. The Return On Investment tool validates the presence and currency of the data files on startup.

The User is prompted to select a category. On selection the Industry data, Market Distribution by area and Sales Results are displayed for the category.

Three other tabs are available from this screen. Consumer characteristics; Search characteristics and the Return On Investment tab. The Consumer Characteristics tab provides a breakdown across categories of the target demographics. The Usage Characteristics tab gives a breakdown based on current customer usage. The Return On Investments tab provides the estimated return based on spend for each of the offered packages.

Benefits

Built as a deployable.Net application supported by a centralized data store, the application is reliable, consistent, secure, accurate and maintainable.

The sales force often work in customer sites without convenient internet access and hence needed a tool that could be run on a laptop to demonstrate the benefits of their product.

All the functionality of the previous spreadsheet based tool is present but with better accuracy and no possibility of modification of the underlying data to provide incorrect results. The Sales Force has confidence that the information being provided is correct and up to date.

Technology

Database: Oracle (Centralised Managed Datastore)
Screens: C#, .NET

Background

The client required a software product to manage procurement, receipting and invoicing. The existing system relied on invoicing which provided no visibility of costs until they were due. Payment was via the Accounts Payable system which was a manual data entry system with no external visibility for tracking of invoices.

The requirements were to provide a fully on-line solution enabling purchase orders to be raised and approved electronically when a good or service was required. The order would go through a workflow approval system until authorised. Once the Goods or Services for the order had been provided they are receipted and payment occurs via the existing Accounts Payable system. This allows for proper budgeting, correct tracking and forecasting of expenditure and due to integration with accounts payable greater ability to manage payments. There were many other features that were provided within this system including an online real time reporting tool.

Solution

QuantumIT designed and built a browser based application that utilises ORACLE database technology. It includes the following modules:

• Purchasing module – Allows purchase orders to be raised and managed via a workflow process to authorisation. Integrates with the email system to notify staff of tasks that need to be completed. Integrates with accounts payable to raise the approved purchase/service order.
• Good receipting module – On receipt of a good or service allows the invoice to be processed. Has tolerance levels built in to allow for changes from original purchase order. Integrated with Accounts Payable for automated payment and tracking of the payment through the accounts payable process.
• Invoice module – Allows raising of invoices for payment. Follows a standard authorisation workflow process and integrates with Accounts Payable. Allows optional cheque generation, AMEX reconciliation and an Incentive Management process.
• Reporting module – Ad-hoc reporting module that provides current data on all aspects of the Orders, receipts and Invoices. Includes data passed back from Accounts payable on invoice payment status. Built in security allow you to only see the data you are authorised to see.
• Budgeting module – Allows budgets to be entered, monitored and adjusted. Orders and invoices are integrated with the budget to enable tracking of actual spend against forecast.
• Administration module – Reference data (users, spend authorities, GL codes etc) is loaded automatically from database of record throughout the organisation. This means that the reference data is automatically synchronised and only valid codes are used. This module also manages security access to the application.

The solution was tailored to the customers internal processes and practices rather than acquiring a package that would have required extensive internal business change to implement. QuantumIT quoted and delivered the system under a fixed price agreement with no variations.

Benefits

• Streamlined processing of orders - validation occurs on entry; paperless system; workflow integrated into email means the process is proactive; accounts payable integration ensures orders are automatically uploaded without need of re-keying; order and invoice tracking within accounts payable; visibility of project expenditure.
• Online real time reporting tool
• System that supports business process rather than business process changing to align to a system.
• Intuitive user interface
• High client satisfaction

Technology

Database: Oracle
Screens: Browser, Oracle Application Express
Reporting: Oracle Application Express

Background

To meet the challenges of the changing nature of the Superannuation industry, this market leading fund with several hundred thousand members recognised the need for a data warehouse to support more flexible and rapid marketing analytics and communication capability, to better inform, serve and ultimately retain and grow their membership base.

Solution

The data warehouse solution comprises:

• A purpose-built flexible ETL component to handle feed and job automation
• A Staging layer containing copies of source system information for:
  a. managed input into the Reporting layer
  b. historical data management
  c. ad-hoc user queries, and
  d. auditing requirements
• A Reporting layer containing business focussed Star Schemas and high-level campaign and analytical data marts, as well as a suite of campaign management tables.

QuantumIT designed, built and deployed the solution under a fixed price development agreement.

Benefits

The Reporting layer merges data from the organisation’s Call Centre, Website, Pension and Superannuation systems, and includes a dedicated member repository. This provides a single member view formed by mapping members across each of the input systems.

Technology

Database: SQLServer 2005

Background

The client wanted a configurable reporting environment allowing them to:

1. load source system files
2. configure data feeds, metrics and reporting structures;
3. analyse opportunities for stopping revenue leakage; and
4. monitor the financial impact of the changes implemented

Solution

QuantumIT designed and delivered a highly configurable solution that enables the client to identify and monitor discrepancies with billing systems throughout the business, with little or no need for technical support to bring in new feeds, create metrics and build new dashboards and reports.

Using easy and intuitive screens and wizards, users can configure new load processes, applying pre-built functions to perform complex data transformations. Similarly, user functions can be used to create simple and compound metrics to analyse relationships between data from different sources and over time.

The data loaded and analysed can be presented through reports and dashboards providing a simple, graphical view of the key financial characteristics of the data being analysed.

Benefits

A clear and focussed user view is provided, and all components of the data load, metric build and dashboard construction are able to be configured by non-technical users.

New feeds, reports and dashboards can be built in a “playpen” user test area then migrated to production when accuracy and stability have been validated.

Technology

Database: Oracle
Screens: Browser, C#, .NET
BI / Reporting: Business Objects

Background

The client required a software product to calculate staff resource requirements and shift rosters to plan call centre campaigns. A market search revealed no suitable package software and QuantumIT was engaged to design and build a product able to meet the requirements. The tool needed to allow for flexible start times, full and part time shifts and optimise use of agent time depending on the projected call pattern and length.

Solution

QuantumIT designed and built a browser based application that utilises SQL Server database technology. It allows the client to:

• Define contracts and the “shift types” associated with these contracts. This includes minimum and maximum start times per weekday, breaks, duration, and consecutive days off
• Load “base” data that identifies call demand for each 15 minute period, for each weekday (Sunday to Saturday)
• Define multiple scenarios for a contract that can be easily executed against different “base” data sets
• Adjust scenario configuration variable and re-execute in a timely manner for quick scenario comparisons
• Easily identify the effectiveness of different scenarios with the aid of “Net Staffing” graphs, “Staffing and Shift” graphs, and the “Daily Shift Schedule” graph

Benefits

• A generic, flexible system that can be configured to each contract’s specific needs
• Tailored algorithm, optimised for fast execution and report generation
• Saves hours of manual calculations
• Intuitive user interface
• High client satisfaction

Technology

Database: SQL Server
Screens: Browser, ASP
BI / Reporting: MS Reports

Background

A growing multi-national mobile phone telecommunications carrier realised the importance of reporting that can be used to track company performance, call patterns, usage patterns, sales and promotional activities. QuantumIT was engaged to develop a complete Business Intelligence solution.

Solution

The Business Intelligence solution comprises:

• Data warehouse that includes:
• Series of source system feeds from key operational systems
• A flexible ETL component to automate feed and job management and processing
• A Staging layer containing copies of source system data that are used to manage input into the Reporting layer, historical data management and auditing requirements
• A Reporting layer containing a series of data marts that comprise star schemas and aggregate star schemas
• Enterprise analysis and reporting capability that includes:
• OLAP cubes for multi-dimensional querying via Microsoft Excel Pivot Tables
• End-user reporting via the BusinessObjects XI reporting suite

QuantumIT designed, built and deployed the entire solution under an agreed two phase implementation. The project required co-ordination between QuantumIT consultants located abroad at the client’s premises and a team located at QuantumIT Head Office in Australia.

Benefits

• A centralised and consolidated reporting environment providing access to all key enterprise information
• Removing the reliance on IT staff for ad-hoc reporting requirements by empowering business users to create their own reports as needed
• Reduced report creation time as all information is ready for drag-and-drop reporting
• Improved analytical and over-time reporting

Technology

Database: SQL Server 2005
OLAP Cubes: SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services
BI / Reporting: BusinessObjects XI