Pocket Phone Shop Support - Case History.

Telekinetix were approached by the developer of the system for The Pocket Phone Shop in 2000. Part of the condition for the sale of the company was that the system was backed up with professional IT support and development resources.

The existing system had a number of issues that were causing the business a great deal of pain. The first task was to identify the issues and deliver quick fix solutions. Some of the issues identified were:

• System stability - The system was crashing between 5 and 10 time per week.
• System support - Users felt that they had little or no support on the system and had come to expect the frequent crashes.
• System performance - At peak times it could take 5 minutes to transact a sale and up to a minute to log on.
• Poor retail processes - Sales required a form filling in and the capture of customer information. A process which did not suit all products and services being sold.
• Poor stock management processes - Processes for booking in and out stock were not robust and visibility of stock and it's location was poor.

Telekinetix were able to assist O2 resolve the issues and keep the system running for an 18 month period whilst they implemented a new system in parallel. We achieved this by analysing the current situation; documenting current processes and working with the management team.

Telekinetix delivered the following improvements to the existing system whilst also providing invaluable input into the new system selection and implementation process, through the analysis work that was carried out.

By end of month one the following tasks had been carried out:

• Analysing the bottlenecks and started the task of re-designing the system and business processes.
• Implementing management controls on the ad-hoc reporting access to the system.
• Commissioned and managed the re-coding of significant portions of the systems code (this in turn had a significant effect on performance).
• Upgrading server hardware as many of the issues were associated with this.
• Upgrading the version of the database software that the system was running.
• Implementing a more rigorous backup and recovery solution for the system.

This resulted in the elimination of crashes; improved performance and increased user confidence. The knock on effect of these changes resulted in increased sales capacity and throughput and reduced staff turnover. During the critical Christmas period. As a by product support calls were reduced enabling the support team to concentrate on other tasks

By the end of Month 3 the following tasks had been carried out:

• Continued work on re-designing the system and business processes.
• Implementation of a quick sales process which involved the creation of an on screen till (implemented in the existing system from scratch) integrated with barcode scanners, display pole, cash drawer and thermal receipt printer.
• Modified existing reporting processes and implemented new reports to improve performance and allows greater visibility of information whilst putting less strain on the system.

The result of this activity was to further improve performance and stability of the system and provide with vital information for planning and decision making.

By the end of month 6 the following tasks had been carried out:

• Design, development and implementation of a separate, stock management system.
• Assistance with designing and implementing a long needed stock audit at store and warehouse level.
• Continued process and systems improvements.

Performance was further improved by taking out the heavy processing burden of the stock management process. In addition warehouse stock entry errors were reduced and spotted earlier. The stock audit whilst raising a number of issues about the real stock position successfully provided management with vital information to move forward.

Throughout the process Telekinetix were inputting into the deployment of the new system and helping with migration plans. However, their main contribution to this strand was the process work and actions on the existing system allowing management to focus on the future.