Global Development is Answer to Retailer’s Application Integration Challenge
The Client
- Organization that provides customer service support for a nationwide chain of department stores
- Handles all projects that involve credit authorizations, new credit account development and processing, customer service, collections, catalog sales processing services and financial services
- Operates call centers in six locations across the United States
What the Client Wanted
- To move various business units with similar business processes to a standardized call center application, used for handling customer service orders over the phone
Challenges
- Required integrating four different applications into one common call center platform
- Time became a factor since project began two months later than expected
LÛCRUM’s Solution
- Seamless development of a call center application used nationwide by more than 1,200 customer service representatives (CSRs)
- Delivered on time and on budget
- Fewest “User Acceptance Testing” issues ever, according to client
LÛCRUM’s Approach
- Clearly defined the process, roles and responsibilities, and deliverables of the project, which proved to be paramount to keeping the project on schedule and on budget
- Leveraged LÛCRUM’s Global Development Center to do the work more quickly, with the same high quality, and at a lower overall cost to the client
- Off-shore flexible work schedules allowed for round-the-clock development
- On-shore Engagement Lead assured the project was on time, on-budget and within scope
- Engaged in a true partnership with client’s IT group; collaborated to analyze feature requests and translate them into detailed business requirements for the off-shore development team
- Focused on communicating clearly to address the diversity of team members
- Used collaboration tools (both vocal and visual) to enhance communication
- Held daily meetings to address questions from developers and to review progress
- Used a seamless design review and signoff process among team members
- On-shore unit testing was done to validate requirements were understood and met
- Code reviews ensured code quality and adherence to standards
- A dedicated on-shore architect worked with the client’s systems resources and designers
Efforts
- Assessment, development and implementation: one year
The Benefits
- Eliminates the need for product- or business-specific staff training programs, thereby increasing productivity due to “time” saved
- Allows cross training of CSRs across all business units
- Provides management the flexibility to deploy CSRs to any business unit during peak call hours
- Decreases production support costs by focusing on a single application platform
“The Requirements, Analysis and Design phase that you led on this project was the best I have ever seen, and I work with many on-shore consulting companies. The depth to which you assembled their requirements and needs simplified our job and made it very easy for the project to be successful. Your methodology, to which you flush out customer needs and gain agreement on those needs, is excellent.”
- Director, India Global Development Center
