3. April 2010 by admin.

The Register has a recent, chatty article about successful implementations – ERP (again) but the general principles apply.  Their first point goes to the heart of the services we offer:

It’s obviously necessary to define your requirements appropriately and select a package that fits. Indeed, one of the most prominent recommendations coming back from Reg readers is to minimise the amount of development work associated with customisations and extensions. You can only do this if you start out with a reasonable match between the software and your requirements. And of course when modifications to standard functionality are necessary it helps if the software you have chosen is based on an open platform that is easy to work with from a development and integration perspective.

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31. March 2010 by admin.

In the public sector, the billing system usually represents the biggest single entity within the IT environment.  However even if the billing system  doesn’t account for a lot of the infrastructure per se, it is one of those applications (or suites of applications) a lot of other stuff needs to be plugged into. It’s therefore not something you can easily put to one side and forget about.

The truth is that while everyone focuses on the initial implementation project when considering the cost and resource requirements of the billing system, it doesn’t all come to a nice sweet end after the initial go-live. Whether it’s looking after the beast itself from an operations, maintenance or enhancement perspective, or making sure it remains properly integrated with everything around it, the end result is typically a significant ongoing effort on the part of the IT department.

In terms of routine activity, there’s the usual application of patches and fixes from the vendor, which could be to do with minor functional enhancements, the implementation of regulatory changes, or more systems related things such as supporting the latest upgrade to the database management system upon which the application depends. There’s then the more traditional systems ops side of the equation, ranging from patch management and maintenance of the underlying hardware and platform software, through storage and information management, to performance monitoring and management, including troubleshooting server, storage and network issues as they arise.

In addition to this core activity, an area that has become more of a consideration over the past few years in particular is security and access. As billing systems have been opened up to broader and faster moving audiences, especially customers, more thought and effort has needed to be given to user provisioning and making sure access routes are properly secured. And, of course, the billing system needs to be kept in sync with everything else from a policy perspective.

Some of these developments have come about quite naturally as technology has evolved and opportunities have arisen to take advantage of new ways of doing things within the business. In other areas, technology advancements have also enabled efficiencies to be introduced into the underlying platform. Modern servers, for example, can reduce the cost of ownership considerably when you look at improvements to price performance, energy consumption, space requirements and - not least - manageability. And improvements at this level are not going to let up, so the occasional replatforming project is inevitable in most organisations, with all of the migration work that goes with it.

Beyond the systems side of things we have the day-to-day keeping up with what’s going on in the business. This includes handling change requests for minor modifications and enhancements to the system, and here it is not just the technical work that needs doing, but managing the whole review and approval process, which can understandably be quite strict in some organisations where even a relatively minor mistake could easily have disastrous consequences from a business integrity, continuity and regulatory point of view. All of this adds to the overhead on IT, without even thinking about more substantial projects such as major package upgrades, implementation of new components/modules, extension and customisation work, and integration overhauls as other systems with which billing is inter-dependant are changed or added, etc.

In some organisations, the level of ongoing activity is such that they maintain permanent development and test environments alongside the live system to control and manage the throughput.

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7. March 2010 by admin.

In the second part of a recent Computerworld series on ensuring software implementation project success, Ian Anderson, director at SAP services company DNAstream sets out four elements that he regards as critical:

The first one is a telling reflection on SAP in particular:

“The chosen software must be able to meet the required business processes, not absolutely, but at least to a level that is agreed in advance as acceptable, perhaps a 70% to 80% fit. This is often achieved through a level of compromise, such as adapting the business processes to fit the software where possible.

It is essential to have these business processes identified, documented, understood, mapped to the software and signed off by the business before you start implementation.”

A lot of billing folks would regard a 70 to 80% fit for billing to be a failure.  To be fair to Anderson, he was talking about ERP.

The second is “choose the vanilla flavor”.  In billing that’s not always possible, as billing rules are often mandated by external agencies and regulators.  Here’s what Anderson says:

“The overwhelming advice is to keep the software as standard as possible to avoid potentially costly effort on support and future developments, including upgrades. This is often referred to as vanilla ERP.”

His third point is always a timely one, especially where utilities rush out to get advice from a big-name consulting firm, as if that minimises their risk – use a consultant who understands your business and will know the best approach for you, rather than simply repeating the method he used at his previous client.

Lastly, “Constantly check and review during the project.”  A well-managed project is a prerequisite for a successful implementation.

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31. October 2009 by admin.

Henry Ford once declared that if he had only listened to his customers he would have built a better horse and buggy.  While listening to a customer is an important part of the effective product manager’s role, turning what he has heard into enhanced functionality needs a different skill-set than just listening.  The produce manager must be able to make the leap of how emerging software technologies may be able to deliver the outcome in an entirely new way.  What Henry Ford heard was his customers expressing a desire to get from A to B quickly, safely and cheaply.  He was able to turn that desire into a completely different transport paradigm.  The effective billing manager should be able to do the same.

Posted in product manager, tax billing software, vendors, water billing software | Print | 1 Comment »

15. October 2009 by admin.

There’s a debate about how many questions on functionality should be included in a typical Request for Information (RFI).  My view is that if there’s nothing special about your business then you can assume that, for example, one General Ledger’s pretty much the same as another.  But utility billing or tax billing systems?  That’s a relatively specialised beast, and one where not only are the current requirements pulled this way and that by regulators and government, but developments on the near horizon – smart meters for example – require a system that’s not only robust today but flexible enough for tomorrow.

And the flexibility’s not just built into the software – it’s built into the mindset of the people responsible for enhancing and extending the software.  That’s why the software vendor’s product development manager is such a key person and why in all the RFIs we manage, questions about that person and their industry experience play a central role.  What we look for is industry experience either directly as a revenue manager, preferably in multiple places, or as seasoned project manager with multiple, varying implementations to draw on - the more grey hair the better, in our view.

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11. October 2009 by admin.

How big should the team be that selects and implements software?  A Canadian consultancy believes that the optimum size is five or six, according to a story in IT World Canada.

When buying a commercial app or working with a vendor to create one from scratch, organizations are specifying too many requirements, including ones that are non-essential or cosmetic. According to one Info-Tech Research Group Ltd. consultant, the key to successfully selecting a vendor for packaged or custom applications is to identify core requirements quickly and keep the initial selection team small.

“If you have a team of more than five people who are commissioned with finding the right solution and requirements, you’re probably wasting a lot of effort,” said Andy Woyzbun, lead analyst at London, Ont.-based research and consultant firm. Especially for customized projects, design by large committee almost never works, he added.

Posted in projects, tax billing software, vendors, water billing software | Print | 1 Comment »

11. July 2009 by admin.

City Controller Alan Butkovitz slammed Philadelphia’s water-bill collection system yesterday, saying recent water and sewer rate increases - including a 6.4 percent increase yesterday - were due in part to the city’s inability to fix long-standing problems.”After five attempts and an estimated cost of $50 million, the city still does not have an accurate and fully functioning water-billing system,” Butkovitz said. “While the problem appears to get worse year after year, Philadelphians continue to foot the bill for this ongoing technological mess.”

The problem dates to 2002, when the city began work on a billing system to replace the 30-year-old software that generated bills for 600,000 water customers. After many stops and starts, a new billing system went online in 2008. Butkovitz contends that this billing system is flawed as well, pointing to a drop in water-bill collections ($9 million less under the new system) and an increase in delinquent bills ($11 million). Butkovitz also said the new system still produced erroneous bills, and he released a copy of a February 2008 bill that charged one single-family customer $347,824 for a month of water.

City Revenue Commissioner Keith Richardson, who oversees the billing system, said that bill had been generated in the early months of the new system. when flaws were still being fixed. “The system does now work. People are getting accurate bills,” Richardson said. The commissioner said the dropoff in collections and higher delinquency were due to the faltering economy and new restrictions on the department’s ability to shut off water to delinquent customers, not the billing system.

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24. June 2009 by admin.

The software selection process, whether for water billing software or tax billing software - or indeed any not-off-the-shelf software - is a two step trip: first you create a large list of candidate vendors (the long list) who you will send a request for further information. You select the best suited for you (the short list) and go with them in detail on your needs (request for proposal).  Bas de Baar is an IT project manager.  The following steps come from his Software Projects Blog.

The steps covered below are the ones to get to the short list.

* Define your needs

* Define your selection criteria

* Create the long list

* Create the request for information

* Evaluate the responses

* Create your short list

You see, nothing you can’t handle!

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23. June 2009 by admin.

Implementing the new tax billing software or water billing software is all very well, but how expert are the users?  There may have been some initial training when the new application was installed, but as new staff join and old lands leave, skills drop off if there is no formal training program.  One old hand answers in this article “Keeping up with a computer takes skill“.

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23. June 2009 by admin.

Will tax billing software or water billing software ever be open source?  “Ever” is one of those word that’s often bandied around, so let’s limit it to the next 10 years.  There is a small market for public sector billing software, with a relatively small number of players, and a highly specialised sector knowledge required.  My guess is “unlikely”.  However it’s pleasing to see that in Australia Microsoft cash is being used to fund some open source development - see this story from Down Under.

Posted in tax billing software, vendors, water billing software | Print | 1 Comment »