Disaster Recovery Tip #16

Competitive advantage.

In today's volatile financial environment, interruptions increasingly threaten the survival of businesses who are unable to recover quickly. By implementing a practiced, comprehensive disaster recovery plan, you give your organization the ability to get back up and running faster than your competitors - if they are able to recover at all. This ensures that you can service your current customers, potentially grow your client base, and increase customer retention in the future - all improving your bottom line.

Disaster Recovery Tip #15

Welcome innovation.

Interruptions happen all the time. And complacency can be a killer. Analyze your organization's response to everyday events like computer crashes, prolonged power outages and loss of phone and internet. How long did it take before you were back up and running? What job functions were most severely impaired? What can you do going forward to resume operations faster?

Always look for ways to streamline your response. Most importantly, solicit opinions from your staff, stakeholders and customers. Innovation can be found in surprising places. Embrace it.

In that spirit, Agility would like your help in making innovative improvements to our solution. We have asked an independent research firm to develop a survey that examines our services and the needs of the marketplace. You will not need to enter any personal information and your responses will be submitted anonymously. Please take a few minutes to complete the survey by clicking here. Thank you.

Supreme Court's Lack of Knowledge on Texting, Paging, & Cell Phones

During oral arguments today in the case City of Ontario v. Quon, which considers whether police officers had an expectation of privacy in personal (and sexually explicit) text messages sent on pagers issued to them by the city, the justices of the Supreme Court at times seemed to struggle with the technology involved.

The first sign was about midway through the argument, when Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. - who is known to write out his opinions in long hand with pen and paper instead of a computer - asked what the difference was “between email and a pager?”

Other justices’ questions showed that they probably don’t spend a lot of time texting and tweeting away from their iPhones either.

At one point, Justice Anthony Kennedy asked what would happen if a text message was sent to an officer at the same time he was sending one to someone else.

“Does it say: ‘Your call is important to us, and we will get back to you?’” Kennedy asked.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrangled a bit with the idea of a service provider.

“You mean (the text) doesn’t go right to me?” he asked.

Then he asked whether they can be printed out in hard copy.

“Could Quon print these spicy little conversations and send them to his buddies?” Scalia asked.

It wasn’t just the justices who had technical difficulties. When Justice Samual Alito asked Quon’s attorney Dieter Dammeier if officers could delete text messages from their pagers in a way that would prevent the city from retrieving them from the wireless carrier later, Dammeier said that they could.

A few minutes later, Alito gave Dammeier another shot at that question.

“Are you sure about your answer on deletion?” Alito asked.

Dammeier admitted that he didn’t know. “I couldn’t be certain,” he said.

More on oral arguments in the case here on Lawyers USA Online.

Many teens send 100-plus texts a day, survey says

(CNN) -- As most parents of adolescents know all too well, text messaging has become the preferred method of communication for American teenagers, with one in three teens sending more than 100 texts a day, a new survey says.

The survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project illustrates the indispensable role that text messaging, and mobile phones in general, play in the lives of today's teenagers.

Three-quarters of 12- to 17-year-olds own cell phones, up from 45 percent in 2004, and daily text messaging to friends has increased rapidly in recent years.

The research, made public Tuesday, confirms that teens make and receive far fewer phone calls than text messages. They primarily use their phones for voice calling when communicating with parents, although they prefer text messaging when it comes to communicating with their peers.

Although teens make or receive about five calls a day, half of them send a minimum of 50 text messages a day, the survey found.

"Texting is so functional and efficient," said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at Pew, when asked to explain the survey results. "It's convenient and fits into those small spaces in daily life. You're not talking about much, but you're telling people you're connected to them."

How do teens manage to send so many text messages while spending the better part of Monday through Friday in the classroom?

Forty-three percent of teens who take their phones to school reported sending at least one text message from class a day, despite the fact that many schools have banned cell phones in class.

Lenhart said this just goes to show how important text messaging is to teens.

"Teenagers have been looking for ways to skirt around rules and defy administrators for millennia, whether it's passing notes in class or passing digital notes in class through cell phones," she said.

And teenage girls are doing most of the texting. Girls send and receive about 80 text messages a day, while boys send and receive only 30.

This is not a surprising find, according to Pew, as females also use other communicative tools more than males. Girls will text for social reasons more so than boys will, the survey found. For example, 59 percent of girls text their friends multiple times a day "just to say hello," as opposed to 49 percent of boys who do the same.

The fact that girls use their cell phones more than boys might be one reason that of the 64 percent of parents who have monitored their teens' cell phones, the vast majority are parents of 12- to 13-year-old girls.

"It's a historic relationship. ... Parents tend to regulate girls more than boys for a variety of social and gender reasons," Lenhart said.

Teens are using their phones to record and share their daily experiences, Lenhart said. In addition to texting, 83 percent of teens use their mobile phones to take pictures, and 64 percent of teens share their pictures with others.

During focus groups, Lenhart said, she asked teens what they liked to take pictures of with their cell phones. The most common answers: their pets, the people in their lives and the funny things they want to share with their friends.

Lenhart said the growth of wireless carriers' unlimited texting plans has made it easier for teens to communicate via text message.

"It's like the all-you-can-eat plan," she said. Teenagers "don't have to worry about cramming everything into 160 characters anymore. ... It doesn't cost 20 cents to send 'OK' to a friend."

The Pew survey was conducted last summer on landline and cell phones, and it included 800 youths ages 12-17, plus one of their parents.

For the original article, click here.

Disaster Recovery Tip #14

High and dry.

Over the past two weeks Agility has responded to fifteen different Members whose businesses were significantly interrupted due to flooding. Spring is the perfect time to evaluate your preparedness in the event of a flood, and with hurricane season around the corner, think about how your business could be affected.

Take a look at Agility's Flood Preparedness Guide for useful info and steps you can take right now.

Case Study: The Cellular Telephone Business Model a World Away in Uganda, Africa

By Tom Sheridan

In February, I had the opportunity to travel to Uganda, Africa for two weeks to work on an expansion of an elementary school in Lukaya and to provide support in repairing a solar powered water system in a neighboring village called Kalungi. It was a wonderful, life-changing experience and a remarkable privilege to be able to go there. While on the trip, I saw the business of cellular telephones and wireless Internet in a completely new light. In an industry that more typically thrives on the confusion of an endless array of feature phones, complicated plans, contracts, bewildering line item charges and often poor customer service levels, I must ask, is “confusion” the best brand building approach?

In Uganda, cellular rules are all different. In fact, they’re deceptively simple. It’s fascinating to me how the business of cellular communications has evolved so well there in less than ten years. Excepting Kampala its capital, there are few wired telephone lines. I don’t remember seeing wired phones except in the hotels, and I’m not so sure you could even make outside calls with them. Cellular phones however have really caught on and the networks there are “3G” and reliable.

I cannot think of many businesses that could be started in Uganda that could charge enough to make a profit and recoup the original investment within a reasonable time. Uganda is most definitely a third world country, as it is in the bottom fifth of economic output per capita in the world. Average income per person is around $100 a month, so little disposable income remains for having a phone. Historically, I would imagine telephones weren’t needed much outside of the major populated areas. For most Ugandans, their world was quite local. In Uganda, cell phones are not registered to people, only to the networks. Phones are plentiful and you can easily buy them “reconditioned” or you can purchase a new one from a number of phone stores in Kampala. For service, a SIM card (a small computer chip) which costs 3,000 Shillings, about $1.50 US, is required. That activates the phone, provides a phone number, and the first five minutes of airtime. Additional airtime can be purchased in increments of as little as 200 Shillings, about ten cents. Except for the phone itself, all costs are included in the airtime charges as there is never a bill or a contract required. SIM cards can be interchanged between phones so your number and contact list can be “ported” to another phone in seconds.

Airtime cards are sold everywhere and the commission to the seller is just a couple of percent of the purchase price. They are about the size of a credit card and come sealed in a plastic wrapper. Open it and scratch away a strip on the back of the card to reveal an activation code. Airtime is added to your number by texting the code in a free message to the carrier. A reply with your new balance comes back instantly.

Receiving calls and text messages on cell phones is always free. As long as one has a working phone with a SIM card, they can be received without charge. That is the one aspect of their business model that supported strong market penetration and encouraged cell phone use at the outset. However, all calls originated are timed, and the calling phone is charged for the airtime used. By North American standards, calls are not expensive (about ten cents a minute), but when the average worker earns just a few dollars a day, making calls is a luxury. Most are quick exchanges of information and last just a minute or two. After each call made, a text is received providing the cost of the call in Shillings and the remaining balance. Pricing seemed to be variable, with some calls costing more than others for no obvious reason. Calls made during weekday hours are more expensive than calls at night and on weekends.

Since there are no plans or contracts of any kind required, there is no central phone directory or public registration of numbers. You cannot call “directory assistance,” as there is none. But there are about five competing cellular companies in Uganda with overlapping territories. Each company has a color, much like a team color. While there, I used “MTN” as my provider, the “yellow” team. If one calls a phone on another provider’s network the calls are typically charged at a premium, much like a roaming charge. In fact, there are even “two SIM card” phones available so that networks can be switched on the fly to help keep call charges more affordable.

Electrical power is irregular and frequently unavailable, and many Ugandan’s live without electricity altogether, so recharging of phones is often an issue. There are generator powered “recharging stations” available in the towns. Samsung recently came out with a “solar powered” phone, which is the model I purchased for about $50. Every hour of solar charging provides about ten minutes of talk time. That is not much, but enough to power the phone in an emergency. It was more of a novelty than a necessity for me. I ended up giving it in like new condition to one of the teachers at the school. Suffice it to say it was a most welcomed gift.

In the towns and villages, most storefronts need painting, but paint is expensive. Capitalizing on this, the cellular companies (particularly MTN) will send a worker and offer to paint it in their company color for free and emblazon it with their logo – so you see MTN just about everywhere. Where else can you buy nearly free billboard-size advertizing for the cost of paint and a few dollars in labor? No permits are required either.

Wireless Internet is a different story. “High speed” bandwidth costs a fortune or is unavailable. I purchased a wireless USB modem and a SIM card for about $90 and added a month of service (minimum $45) to get a whopping 238K of connection speed. The actual speed was slower than the most primitive dial-up connection I’ve ever used. In the pioneer days of AOL, access was frequently busy, but once you got on it was good enough for basic tasks. My experience with wireless Internet in Uganda made my AOL experience ten years ago look appealing.

Getting online was easy but once “authenticated,” the initial connection speed lasted just a few seconds. More often than not, sending a small file attachment (50K) would time out and fail. Connecting to an SMTP or POP server here in the States to send and receive e-mail was tedious, time-consuming, and usually failed as well. Before wireless Internet became available, “Internet Cafes” provided computers and Internet service where one would literally spend an entire day to do some basic e-mailing. Not surprisingly, they charge by the minute, too. Cafes are still around but the bandwidth has improved enough that a connection there can actually be productive now. Can you imagine a dozen or more computers simultaneously connected to the equivalent of a sporadic dial-up connection? That is what access was like before wireless Internet.

The big news is that fiber is coming to much of Africa. My understanding is that the continent has had a growing bandwidth bottleneck getting traffic to and from the rest of the world. New fiber has been installed on the ocean floor and that fiber is now being extended across the continent. In fact, fiber was being buried in conduit along the main road in Lukaya while I was there. Because labor is plentiful, Ugandans are installing it in a ditch across Uganda, dug entirely by hand. These laborers are paid 17,000 shillings a day (about $8) to dig a section of ditch 1 foot wide by 4 feet deep by ten feet long. This is about a day’s work and is considered good pay for “temporary work.” Digging is backbreaking work in the hot sun, yet the dedication to task of the laborers is remarkable.

My guess is that this fiber will be connected to the cellular infrastructure shortly, and since the 3G network is already in place, a quantum leap in Internet connection speeds and overall reliability will occur soon. Most of the 33 million Ugandans don’t have computers (or even the electrical power for them), so I don’t see this affecting the average person greatly in the near term. But I do see the commercial economy in Uganda and throughout Africa “blossoming” in the next five years. Labor is plentiful and raw materials seemingly abound, but being connected to the rest of the world has lagged behind most other places. I do believe Internet will benefit the business community and spur foreign investment once better systems are in place. To wit: I did not use my credit cards once on the entire trip. Credit cards are not accepted anywhere, as the banking infrastructure does not yet exist.

There is beauty in the simplicity of a “cash society” and participating in a diverse local business community comprised of small specialty shops and services. This is a leasure not easily found elsewhere. The headmaster of the school, a young gifted teacher, did not know about the Golden Arches or Wal-Mart. Why would he? Those giants would wreck havoc on the local economy and I do not believe there is nearly enough wealth to spark that kind of development anytime soon.

Cellular is a corporate anomaly in the Third World. No doubt, these companies invested tidy sums to build out their networks, and they have become a part of the daily lives of perhaps the majority of Ugandans by now. It’s become a big business. Yet, for most, communication by telephone didn’t exist ten years ago. SMS text messaging is also commonplace and each one costs 140 Shillings, about seven cents. Most phones I saw were more basic than the smartphones typical of Western business. Voice and text messaging worked consistently well. People there like their phones and use them.

Undoubtedly, reliable communications and improving Internet have added economic value to the local economies throughout Uganda even though the steady stream of Shillings spent on airtime disappears, perhaps for good. Despite their remarkable market penetration and apparent success, the cellular companies remain an automated industrial complex, a world away from the labor of the masses still digging in the trenches.

Coming soon: Call centers that don't suck

Just about every consumer who has dealt with a call center has faced the frustration of navigating through an unending sea of menu options or waiting eons to talk to a human being only to wind up with the least helpful employee.

Those annoyances and inefficiencies wear away at customers' satisfaction with the company they're dealing with, and that can ultimately cut into the company's bottom line.

But all is not lost. Real help may be on the way.

A new service developed by IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) and specialty insurance provider Assurant Solutions (AIZ, Fortune 500) plays matchmaker between customers and call center reps. IBM's service, called the Real-time Analytics Matching Platform (RAMP), connects customers with the call center employee best qualified to serve their individual needs.

Currently, most call centers only match an agent's availability and product mix expertise with the customer's particular product, making it an inexact science, to say the least.

"It's a little bit of a crap shoot regarding who you're going to talk to when you call a call center," said Toby Cook, analytics practice leader at IBM Global Business Services. "We combined our expertise in contact centers with our analytics to take it to another level. It's like speed dating for contact centers."

How it works
When a call comes in, RAMP instantly pulls up data about the customer, including past purchases and previous calls. The system then cross-analyzes that data with the skills of each call center agent.

Finally, RAMP uses its so-called "matching engine" to connect the customer with the best-suited agent within an acceptable amount of time.

For example, if a customer were to dial into a wireless company's call center, RAMP would be able to determine what phone the customer has, how much he or she uses it, what features the customer uses, and other identifying factors like the customer's age. The service would process all that information and match up the customer with a representative who has had past success with others who fit that criteria.

Traditional call centers might treat all customers who own the same BlackBerry models the same, but that can fall short when it comes to providing the best help. One BlackBerry user might be a global business traveler, while another user might be on a family plan and like to send a lot of text messages.

IBM's technology daily measures call center reps' success with a number of factors, including the number of customers they convince to stay with the company. RAMP also determines long-term success: some customers may be convinced to stay with the company after speaking to a rep, but then call back later to cancel.

All of RAMP's analytics are done in a matter of seconds. And since the system matches the analytics with data about customers' acceptable wait-time thresholds, IBM says the time customers spend on hold has either stayed the same or, in some cases, improved.
A success story

Though RAMP only became commercially available in the past few weeks, it has been through about six years of testing.

In 2004, Assurant Solutions took note of its call center issues and developed the analytics-based routing technology that underpins RAMP.

"We took data that has been there for a long time, but hasn't been exploited,' said Cameron Hurst, director of Assurant Solutions. "There haven't been a lot of new ideas in call centers in a long time, but we think this is a new angle on an old business."

Though IBM's version of the system is enhanced and portable, Assurant's more rudimentary system still had a drastic impact on the company's sales figures.

The help desk
Assurant determined that matching customers with the best-suited call center agents for their needs not only improved customer satisfaction, but it also boosted the company's sales. After the first year of using its new technology, Assurant's revenue from its call center rose 29%, and sales through customer retention grew 37%.

The system improved Assurant's call-center attrition rate too. As the system matched up call center reps with situations they would succeed in, agent morale improved. Like at many call centers, Assurant's call center reps are paid on commission.

"The more customers they save and the more they sell, the more money they make," said Hurst. "The system has a knack of delivering the right customer to the right rep, giving the reps the highest opportunity for success. They love it, and it has resonated very, very well with our customers."

For the original article, please click here.