RE:companion
I left working for o2 in their collections dept in june last year so have had to work with their computer systems. They originally had a system called DISE which is a text based program built decades ago and worked brilliantly. They then spent close to £100 million (AFAIK) developing the companion system in-house. Most new (consumer) customers were on companion and they started migrating people onto it from DISE. They then realised companion was crap and bought the new DISE 3G which was basically a single-window-based GUI planted on top of the old system. They then started migrating customers back onto DISE! Now you say they migrating them again!
Just to give an example of how crap companion is,, these are the steps required to see how much a customer owes:
1 - Log onto kana (deals with workflow and stores customer notes)
2 - Click on a button that brings a dialogue box asking for an email address.
3 - Click on search customer which brings up the companion window.
4 - Enter search details (eg mob number)
5 - If found right account the window will fill with some customer details (basically just name and address)
6 - Click on security tab (this brings up details such as date of birth and password - needed to verify customer)
7 - Click back on prev tab.
8 - Click customer verified button.
9 - Screen will close and email address will go into box mentioned in 2. Click OK
10 - Dialogue box will close and it will show in kana as having a msg in inbox. Click on a button on toolbar.
11 - A new window will open. Scroll to the bottom and select view bill.
12 - A new window will open (This is EBPP system) showing bill as it appears on customer's statement (ie doesn't show whether it has been paid etc).
13 - Click on payment history and finally view what is owed. Bear in mind this will show full balance owed, even if only part of the bill is late
Between 8 and 13 can take up to a minute if system running slow. As I was in collections, I was getting calls that were getting automatically diverted from custs who owed money and it took ages to even find out how much.
Now on DISE:
1 - open DISE
2 - navigate to search screen. (about three/four key strokes)
3 - Enter search data
4 - see main page with all security details and arrears.
Big difference.
BTW sorry for long post. The system made me so mad, I just needed to vent!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
