8th Largest Mortgage Bank-Largest Financial Institution

CRM - CUSTOMER SERVICE AT ITS FINEST!

I walked to work this a.m. I noticed the morning air, heavy with a slight chill. Pasadena California is pretty.

While I passed several large vertical bank buildings, a man was walking towards a door, carrying three large pink boxes, I assumed ladened with donuts. He also had another package that was proving to be unmanageable as he was shifting the package from hand to hand.

I walked towards him with a smile and offered to assist with the door that he was about to enter. He turned to me, looked at me and said, "Oh, No! I can get it." As his hand slowly went to the door handle, he was aware that he had to keep the balance or the boxes would fall. I opened the door for him, and he thanked me.

I walked a little farther down the sidewalk towards IndyMac located on Lake Ave. In the distance, while still on Colorado Ave., a blind black man with a white long skinny cane was slowly sweeping it back and forth as he headed towards me. He gently touched an edge by a sidewalk planter almost walking into the planter when the proprietor of a restaurant came out, put his arm out for the man to grab on to and escorted his customer to safety through the doors of his eatery.

How about that! That is customer relationship management the way it was envisioned-not the buzz word that it is today, with its crappy interfaces, phony deliverables and a nightmare to the organization in terms of interface and costs.

What do you say?


Lyle K'ang, MBA/IM
Sr. Business Analyst
VITConsultancy and Cognizant Technology Systems for IndyMac Bank Disaster Recovery Infrastructure.

THE STATE OF THE CIO The Number-One Problem: The Project Backlog

BackLog-Creates Jobs
Posted: JAN 12, 2006 03:06:00 PM CIO
by Lyle K'ang
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Totally agree with "the application backlog isn’t a problem one solves, it’s a condition one lives with as technology matures and expands into new areas of the business, enabling growth and greater efficiency."

I also see a need to educate the executive cadre’ about this one, most important function in a pleasant working arena, "One needs effective governance." Without it we might as well go back to the early ’70’s and preach the ’blood-letting’ cry of re-engineering, over and over again.

It didn’t work--what works is intelligent human beings monitoring-managing, human possibilities which include the sub-technology (infrastructure) of our environment.

If you don’t get the human-possibilites/limitations in check, in my ’book’, you’re no better off than rampaging bulls down the street.


Lyle K'ang
Business Consultant
IncMy
________________________

A Damaging Metric

A Damaging Metric
Posted: DEC 31, 2005 07:28:55 PM - CIO Magazine

I can generously use most of all your arguments-all are in alignment when using IT not as a cost center but as a value to business. Who rallies behind the implementation must be a partner and driving force for change.

Metrics-integration with business goals is of course the way we want to go but for most smaller entities; this is new. They go the route of needing the XYZ because...

Metrics can be made to show good TCO, ROI, & ROA. But is it really the way to nirvana? ROA is better than ROI in some circles. All these formulas do not show business value-not really.

I can show you that wireless in a manufacturing plant such as Boeing, can bring you an impressive ROI, sometimes to the value of 135% but at what business cost?

You lose your base, your workers, your plants, lose your reputation in a global market and move-at what costs TO YOU?

So your driving ROI % and pushy Senior Exec’s is not new at all-maybe in a bubble, but we work in a community, international, national, and other borders. These metrics must show goodwill. These are intangibles as such, but tangibles are all you have with metrics. Grab the intangibles-up and done your supply and customer chain.

If your business is simply making money, like a slot machine (not all companies are strategically aligned to making money), then an infrastructure set up for transactional activity is a slam-dunk and IT and business goals win.

But if the goals are efficiency, process management, human resources; Quality expenditures - refining metrics, then it’s more about costs...and IT and costs just don’t get along. IT must deliver lower costs all around in all transactions-automatic, manual and especially with customer feelings...so you data mine-and at what costs? What are the deliverables?

Spending more on IT does not necessarily give you the winning-hand. I believe the information you glean from your business goals, including the tiring and endless details, are the most important for IT and the business, before anyone goes after metrics.

Lyle K'ang, MBA/Information Management
BUSINESS CONSULTANT