December 1999
Put the 'dot-com' in Customer Service
By Mason Grigsby
If you want to compete in the new economy, one of your highest priorities should be putting
computer-generated bills, statements, invoices and e-commerce documents online. Enterprise Report
Management (ERM) systems are “middleware” application servers that meet this need. They
let you electronically store and access business documents associated with customer transactions
from any computer system and transform them for the Internet so you can deliver them to any location,
system or individual. By adding business intelligence software, you can create new reports and
“mine” document data for statistical analysis.
Electronic documents represent the primary corporate memory in today’s customer service and
Internet delivery environment. They are both the current and the historical reference to a
business’ internal activity and customer communications. Enterprise Report Management solutions
leverage the legacy document format to index, store, retrieve, view and electronically distribute
customer information through wide area networks, local area networks, virtual private networks and
the Internet. ERM systems accept output documents from a single system or from disparate systems, i
ndex and store them and then link them to customer service call center technology.
The three case studies presented in this article illustrate how existing legacy billing, statement
and e-commerce data applications can be leveraged to create customer service Web portals.
Retailer Reinvents Customer Support
Brick Warehouse has developed a state-of-the-art e-business solution that combines intranet report
delivery with ad-hoc report creation and data mining software. The largest independent furniture
retailer in Canada, Brick Warehouse has 56 showrooms and four regional offices. By replacing print
reports and computer output to microfiche with up-to-date enterprise report management software, the
company was able to reinvent its customer service processes and improve productivity.
Like many businesses, the retail chain was having difficulty providing timely information to its
employees and customers. The print and microfiche process presented a two- to four-day delay in the
delivery of information to regional centers and stores. Account queries from the 56 retail locations
were phoned in to one of the regional offices, where relevant data had to be looked up manually.
Queries involving more than one (report) billing period required multiple lookups to find all
relevant transaction information.
Eastman Software (www.eastmansoftware.com)
supplied Brick Warehouse a Web-enabled ERM system that
ensures all computer-generated transaction reports are available online as soon as they are created.
The system consists of a Windows NT server, the Eastman ERM software and a Hewlett Packard 5
1/4” optical jukebox with 64 5.2-gigabyte cartridges. The daily print files from the
company’s host Data General Aviion computer are downloaded via frame relay to the ERM system.
The key to successful enterprise report management solutions is the metadata index creation
process. The software automatically extracts the primary fields that will be used to retrieve
specific line items. In this case, each line item on the report is indexed by customer number and
name, which allows specific transactions to be retrieved even if the customer does not have a
transaction number. This level of indexing eliminates the customary, tedious “eyeballing”
of report data to find the desired line items. It also eliminates the manual cross-reference process
of name-to-account-number lookups. Employees now have browser access to all current and historical
reports through the company intranet. They simply enter one of three fields — the customer name
or number, the contract number or the amount in question — on the browser screen to locate the
proper transaction. The keyfield retrieval used in conjunction with high-performance report mining
software allows both indexed and non-indexed field searches over any time period. This gives Brick
Warehouse instant access to a detailed history of every transaction with any customer.
Another use of the report mining software allows a specific “item code” to be entered
to track the sales totals for any individual item over an 18-month period, which is the current life
cycle of records kept online. In the future, the company plans to use this mining capability to
target specific customers for mailing promotions based on their purchase histories. They’ll be
able to do it without creating pre-defined metadata search criteria.
Brick Warehouse invested just under $300,000 in this ERM system, and according to Lanna LaPorte,
computing facilities manager, it brought faster service and a hard-dollar payback in 18 months.
“The ability to locate line-item billing detail in real time has created a service environment
that benefits customers and employees,” says LaPorte. “We are delivering our transaction
data with browsers from standard legacy reports with no programming effort on our part.”
Brokerage House Puts Customer Histories Online
Morgan Keegan is a 30-year-old Southeast regional brokerage firm with more than $400 million in
revenue. Headquartered in Memphis, TN, the firm has 40 branch offices and more than 1,700 employees.
Customers include large institutions such as pension plan providers, banks and insurance companies
as well as retail clients.
Gary Guinn, Morgan Keegan’s director of information technology, knows that brokerages,
“have to be early adopters of technology-based services to maintain a competitive
advantage.” He became aware that a turnkey ERM system could be used to store and transform
existing legacy document formats for Web-based delivery to employees and customers alike.
Morgan Keegan’s Tandem host computer generates more than 1.6 million customer documents per
month consisting of statements, year-end 1099s and confirmation notices. The company’s legacy
computer output to microfiche storage system was not only costly, it was virtually inaccessible to
branch employees and customers. Customer calls and branch requests were funneled to the central
facility in Memphis, requiring manual retrieval of hundreds of statements and trade confirmations per
month. Costly return phone calls were often required to respond to information requests such as
prices paid for stocks. The one- to five-day response time was unacceptable.
Providing access to database records is one thing, but Morgan Keegan wanted to be able to store and
view statements, 1099s and confirmations in their original print format. If they could email or fax
an exact replica of original documents during the customer’s first service call, they knew that
they could cut costs, improve customer satisfaction and satisfy the seven-year record retention
period mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The system architecture needed to
be robust enough to allow access by the customer service, legal and compliance departments, as well
as customers via the Internet.
After a careful review, the brokerage chose an enterprise report management system supplied by
Insci-statements.com (www.insci.com). The system
combines a Unisys server with Windows NT software,
12” optical disks to meet SEC regulations on records reliability, and Insci’s indexing
and retrieval software capable of updating and storing the metadata index and documents for the
mandated seven-year time period.
Storing documents in their original format allows Morgan Keegan to leverage the Tandem legacy system
by simply transforming the statements, confirmations and 1099s to HTML for browser access by branch
employees. Each customer document is indexed by account number, social security number and security
instrument, which provides immediate access to a 100-million-plus page repository. The real benefit
of ERM, according to Guinn, is the fact the company did not have to develop Internet software.
“The ability to leverage the host print files allowed us to be on the Web with customer
documents within two weeks,” he says. “The long-term online history allows us to
‘mine’ documents to answer customer questions about past transactions — a capability
that we did not have with any other system.”
Report mining software will allow the firm to perform ad-hoc reporting and “data mining”
tasks such as creating new reports from existing legacy reports without programming. It will also
tackle frequent customer requests such as finding the price paid for a particular stock purchased
anytime in the past seven years.
Future plans for Morgan Keegan’s ERM system include allowing customers to access their own
statements, confirmations and 1099s in an extranet environment. This will free even more staff and
provide a significant customer advantage in the process.
Canadian Bank Supports Corporate Payroll Queries
At Ceridian Bank, the payroll department handles outsourced payroll processing for 13,000 clients and
more than one million employees throughout Canada. The bank’s 400 service representatives
throughout the country need access to the payroll registers, customer invoices and audit reports to
respond to customer inquiries. In total, more than 300,000 daily report pages must be available.
They need to be searchable as far back as seven years.
Ceridian had been using a manual process combining computer output microfiche and paper reports to
service these queries. The widely disbursed service representatives called a central service center
to obtain information and request hard copies of invoices, payroll registers and reports. In all,
more than 40,000 reprint pages were being requested per month — response time was measured in
days.
A new solution was needed to provide immediate report access to the service representatives
so they could provide “first call closure” to the bank’s customers. John Giardino,
PC Network Analyst for the bank, was tasked to solve the slow response time within the framework of
a rapid return on investment. The result was a Web-enabled enterprise report management system from
Optical Image Technology (www.opticalimage.com). The system provides instant Web access to all
payroll reports and customer invoice output, and it was operational within two months.
The Ceridian installation combines a Windows NT server with OIT’s SQL-based software to manage
the document-specific metadata index on magnetic disk. Transaction reports and invoices are stored
permanently on a Hewlett Packard 5 1/4” optical disk jukebox. The system cost $250,000 including
software and hardware, and the labor and supply savings promised a one-year return on investment. The
system was implemented with little disruption to the existing computer infrastructure.
The service representatives’ search process was custom designed by the vendor, and it extends
intranet access to Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. A browser screen provides log-in,
password entry and an immediate display of all available payroll reports and invoices that the
employee is authorized to access. Payroll reports and invoice documents are indexed by company
name, company number and employee number. This multi-field metadata access eliminates delay when
the person requesting the information doesn’t know the company number that Ceridian assigned.
Once the individual client report has been accessed, the metadata index lets service representatives
locate and highlight transactions within the report without visually scanning each line item. Once a
record has been located, the software transforms it to HTML for viewing through an Explorer 4.0
browser.
Response times to client queries at Ceridian have been reduced to seconds, and return phone calls
have essentially been eliminated. Customers will soon be able to access invoices and payroll reports
in a self-service mode through an extranet that the bank is creating.
Mason Grigsby is a partner at Imerge Consulting. He can be reached at
mason@imergeconsult.com.
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