Theoretical CMS Project:

Campaign Management Software (CMS) (A)

Davidson Group is a telemarketing firm that specializes in selling cable subscriptions.

In 2003, Dr. Jane Davidson, CEO, decided to improve their internal processes and

selected Mountain Software, Inc. as the vendor to produce the companys automated

campaign management system. The Davidson Group executives were determined to

design their own specialized campaign management software and did not want to

buy a package off the shelf.

Davidson Group provides telemarketing services for competing firms very

successfully, by dividing regionally into smaller companies. Some of their clients

were Cablevision, Comcast, Charter, Mediacom, AT&T, TDS Telecom and others.

Dr. Davidson recently added a full VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) system to

complement their predictive dialers. She was positioning the company to grow 10

fold. Dr. Davidson already identified their reporting process as a bottleneck and

wanted to improve it. Their internal sales manager was negotiating with Comcast

and Charter to engage in a larger portion of their sales emphasizing Davidsons

increased capacity with their new VoIP capabilities and access to direct fiber optic

internet backbone bandwidth for calling.

You work for Mountain Software as a Project Manager leading software development

projects. Mountain chose you to lead this effort because you proved yourself by

recently finishing a very successful project for Farm Insurance Co. where you

managed a group of five developers in the design, development and implementation

of their automotive insurance quoting system.

Davidsons request was to develop software that collected and monitored booked

orders from clients who offered specialized subscriptions for their cable, internet and

phone services. Davidson had a good record of service and selling expertise because

they used predictive dialers. The three automated predictive dialers used were

capable of making over one million calls combined in one day. Currently, their load

combined was less than 250,000 calls per day.

The UNIX based predictive dialers servers main function is to monitor the sales

agents connected to the dialer and the current state of the call. The dialer uses

algorithms to predict when the sales agent will become idle and in anticipation, it

calls the next number on the list. The automated dialer can detect busy signals,

disconnected numbers and other telephony signals. If the dialer cannot get a

connection with a human, it automatically dials the next number on the list.

You are set to have the first meeting with Davidsons lead for this project, Mike Smith.

You ready Mountains presentation of their project management framework. The day

comes, introductions are made and your first question for Mr. Smith is, What can

we do for you, Mr. Smith?

Mr. Smith says that they want to automate their campaign management processes

and the production of campaign analytics reports. The breakdown of the processes

are as follows:

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The company only uses Microsoft Windows based systems equipped with

Microsoft Office to create reports.

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Booked orders, which turn into campaigns, should identify client, campaign

type, goals, sales requirements and duration.

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The system should capture the campaign number generated by the UNIX

servers running the predictive dialers.

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The dialers generate event records kept in a database file named with the

campaign number.

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For one phone call, there could be 17 different telephony typed records,

logging the ring, start of conversation, purchases during the call, up to the

closing records. These records are the sequence of events occurring during

the phone call.

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The calling campaigns started at 8:00 AM and stopped at 11:00 PM,

depending on the time zone. By FCC rules, telemarketing can only happen

between 9:00 AM and 9:00 PM. The company is in Central Time, so they can

start calling at 8:00 AM phone numbers associated to an Eastern Time Zone

only. Similarly, they can call Pacific Time Zone numbers up to 11:00 PM their

time.

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At night, the telephony data migrates from UNIX servers to Windows servers

and goes through an EXTRACT TRANSFORM LOAD (ETL) process, where

those 17 records are analyzed into logical information. The migration and

analysis processes normally finish by 9:00 AM the next day.

?

For each campaign, there is a set of analytical report produced. These reports

analyze the history of the campaign and provide actual counts of call

attempts, calls taken, sales attempts, sales made, etc. The reports were

based a word templates and three secretaries will fill out the information by

hand. There are 4 different report templates.

?

Then, these reports are printed and mailed to a specific distribution list for

the campaign, normally by noon the next day.

Mr. Smith closes by saying that their sales departments expectations are to land

large contracts from Comcast and Charter, increasing the workload 10 times in the

coming year. Therefore, the internal processes most be streamlined and efficient,

capable of handling the increased volume of work.

You, collected information during the entire meeting and at the end you were ready

to ask questions. After reading your notes, you were able to surmise the following:

?

There are three main processes:

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The management of campaigns

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The collection of the data and transformation (ETL)

o

The production of reports and distribution

Campaign Management

The internal sales group at Davidson solicited the orders that turned into campaigns.

They processed the paperwork that defined the campaign length, goals, offers and

the telephone numbers to call.

Once the campaign was setup, the telemarketers executed the campaign. There

were three main locations for telemarketers, each with 300 seats. Very few people

were fulltime telemarketers. It is a high burnout activity. Most employees were part-

time, 4 to 6 hours a day. There were three shifts of telemarketers during each day,

including Saturdays and Sundays.

Data Collection

Predictive dialer servers collected and stored the data automatically, so there was

little to improve during this process. The predictive dialers were capable of producing

1.7 Terabytes of raw data per day.

Data Transformation

After 11:00 PM, all campaigns closed and the data could be harvested. Data was

copied from UNIX servers to Windows servers. Then, there was a massive ETL

process that takes place during the night where data was distilled into analytics.

Reporting and Distribution

Once the data is reduced to informational analytics, it needs presentation, or reports.

This process can only happen after the Data Transformation is done. The production

of reports and subsequent distribution could be a time consuming task.

Mr. Smith was impressed by your ability to decompose the conversation into a

cohesive and organize set of requirements. The meeting closed amiably and you set

the date of the next meeting, 2 weeks away, to present your project charter.

Project Charter

You go back to your company, Maintain, with a positive view. The Mountain

Softwares CEO approaches you and tells you that this is an important account, and

the project must be successful and the client should be very satisfied. We expect

repeat business with this account. At the same time we must generate 10% or more

profit on this project.

Back in your office, you start reviewing your notes, thinking on the makeup of your

team, and stressing on the words from your CEO.

Work to be done:

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Determine the vision for this project.

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Determine the goals for this project.

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Determine if the project can be done in-house.

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Suggest a team.

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Determine the scope.

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Determine the schedule.

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And most importantly, determine the cost.

Vision

A vision is usually a lofty idea of what the client wants to achieve. In this case, they

wanted to create specialized software to aid in managing their campaigns. After

listening to Mr. Smith presentation, it seems that the scope is larger and the vision

goes further into the daily processing of data and distribution of reports.

The vision for this project may be to create a system that supports the daily capturing

of campaigns, night data processing and distribution of reports. In other words, to

become responsive to our clients needs in the accurate and daily distribution of

reports and outcomes of campaigns.

Goals

A goal should be a measurable objective that fulfills the vision. From your meeting

you gathered that many people perform campaign management processes and

automation is sparse. A specific goal can be, the full automation of processes

involved in campaign management, production of analytics and distribution of

reports.

To manage the expected growth, we can place volume parameters for the first goal.

The second goal could be to reduce the time to process and distribute reports from

12 hours to 4 hours. Is it possible? You should ask your team if automating the

entire process could yield such savings.

Another goal could be to deliver/or provide availability to campaign reports to clients

by 9:00 AM. Is it possible? This is another question to ask your developers.

Scope

The features allowed by your software, is normally the scope of the project. It is

obvious that the system should have a framework flexible enough to allow for growth

of volume and functionality. All systems require a framework. In this event, your

client is asking you to develop a unique framework suitable for only Davidson.

Possible Features:

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The framework depends on the environment and computer language selected.

Your team is all Microsoft Certified and the office environment in Davidson is

all Windows based. You might choose a .NET language and Microsoft SQL

Server for your database. This is a good selling point, given the availability of

.NET programmers for future maintenance.

o

Create the concept of a campaign

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Capture client representative information for a campaign

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Capture distribution list for each campaign

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Capture the reports requested for representative for each

campaign

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Capture metrics of success for a campaign

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Capture linking identification with the UNIX system campaign

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Capture budget and limits for the campaign

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The database is essential for the management of campaigns.

o

Design a database to keep the necessary information on a campaign

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Also, collect performance information about the campaign for internal

purposes

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A software bridge between UNIX and Windows to transfer data seamlessly from

one environment to another.

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Purchase computer software for servers

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A night processing procedure to perform the ETL.

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Copy data from UNIX to Windows

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Perform various steps of ETL

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Request all necessary reports

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Distribute all reports

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A report server to run all reports.

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Generic report server that produces requested reports

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Design a generic report server that functions separately from the main

campaign manager

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Design and program each report (currently 4 comprehensive reports)

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A distribution server to distribute the reports.

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Design a distribution server that can create automated access to the

specific reports associated with each person

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Automated creation of emails and attachments

You recorded to the best of your ability and knowledge at this time the possible

features of this project. Now, you should consult your team. There is no team at

this time, since there is no signed contract or charter document. You identified key

personnel that are currently finishing other projects and others that are currently

idle. You gathered all the preliminary approvals to talk with the group as a future

team and sent the participants as much information as you have collected on the

project.

During the meeting, you discuss possible roles for your team, selecting a Software

Design Manager, Testing Manager, Implementation Manager, Database Architect and

a Communications Manager. All participants of your team are programmers. You

made sure to keep the team to a maximum of seven (7) people. You place a request

to the entire team for a detail review of requirements and an for them to give you an

estimate of the effort required to accomplish the deliverables and reaching the goals.

This is a very important step where the team calculates their own estimates. You

should estimate the entire project as well to have a good perspective on the work

ahead. You agree on a future date and time to discuss the estimates for the project.

The estimates are in and the project will take nine (9) months with a team of seven.

You present your estimates to your management and the feedback from the internal

sales team is that $2,520K ($250 * 160 hours * 9 months * 7 people) is too high of

a cost for Davidson. They were looking to spend half that for the system. The scope

of the project does not change, but the number of people working in the project must

be reduced, also influencing the delivery date. There has been no mentioned of a

required delivery date.

You go back and reduce the team to three, extend the delivery date and use the

managers sparingly. You allocate a design manager and the database manager for

a month, the communications manager for two weeks at the beginning and two weeks

at the end, the implementation manager will work just the last month. The budget

is now reduced to $1,243K ($185 * 160 hours * 14 months * 3 people). The schedule

increased to 14 months and the Project Manager will be involved in the technical

aspects of the project as well as performing the administration.

Preliminary Schedule and Milestones

There are personnel risks in having three people involved in this large project. Any

one person gets ill or has to be out of work for any reason will affect the schedule of

the project and will threaten its successful completion. Technically, there are still 6

people in the team, but not all are fulltime. There is no project start or end date until

the Charter/Contract is signed. Months should be depicted as 1 through 14. Any

holidays may extend the project slightly.

Cost

There are costs related to hardware and software, if the client does not have it.

Davidson has the servers already and the SQL Server software as well. The only

thing missing is the UNIX to Windows file transfer software, which you have

determined is a minimal cost per server ($299). Davidson agreed to procure the

communication software themselves. Human resources billing is the significant

portion of cost for this project. The charge for a project manager is $300 per hour,

for a design manager $280 per hour, Communications Manager $250 per hour,

Implementation Manager, $230 per hour and programmers at $120 per hour.

From the theoretical CMS Project, please create a WBS using Microsoft Project. Include more detail tasks. You should have about 50 to 70 tasks total. Include predecessor information. Add all member of the team as resources. Add a third programmer to allocate the Project Manager when programming. The PM and PM acting as programmer cannot be allocated at the same time.

***( Please upload Microsoft Project step by step instruction pictures for doing this )***