Customer Portals for Relocation: Improving Efficiency and Streamlining Operational Processes
Over the past two years, we have witnessed a vast increase in the need from our customers for enhanced technology capabilities; a trend which is in line with networking statistics published by Pew Research.
The beta version of our client portal was launched in 2000; providing authorized client stakeholders with web based secure access to view reports and data. At the time, this was an anomaly in the relocation market and we were one of only a few relocation management companies providing this service. Over the past ten years we have continued to invest in technology; with a consolidated focus on providing enhanced customer service and simplifying the relocation management process for our corporate clients, client employees and worldwide partners.
Today, for example, our customer portal has evolved to a robust self service enterprise, providing client stakeholders with the ability to perform a multitude of on-demand tasks and analysis including:
- Generate customized domestic cost estimates
- Initiate new activity
- Review and approve exceptions
- Track all key data points for in-progress and closed activity
- Communicate with key client service team members
- Build, run, download and analyze data from over thirty pre-built reports and an ad-hoc reporting engine
While technology and connectivity around communications and data share continues to rise in prevalence and need, what are even more astounding are a few of the predictions for the future:
- The mobile device will be the primary internet connection tool for the majority of worldwide users by 2020.
- Voice recognition and touch system interfaces will gain in acceptance in prevalence by 2020.
With these predictions in mind, we ponder what the needs of relocation management practitioners or their relocating employees will be in 5 years or ten? Will technology parallel the personal service required to support consistently superior? While it’s unlikely that technology will ever take the place of personalized service, the overall change in the worldwide environment, the generational changes and corresponding communication preferences of Generation Y, and the overwhelming need for all parties to improve efficiency and do more with less, will certainly play into the discussion and the landscape as we approach the next decade. What do you foresee for the future?
Posted on 01/27/2010 in Technology | Comments (0)
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Self-Service Applications: What is the Right Balance for Relocation?
Just fifteen years ago the most innovative and tech forward companies were rushing to establish their brand presence online through the creation of a simple website. Today organizations in both the B2B and B2C marketplaces are investing significant time and money in self-service technology applications. Driven not only be a need for enhanced internal efficiency but also by customer preferences, companies are working to provide customers on every level the opportunity to manage accounts, receive status updates, and even chat live with a customer service representative 24/7.
Within the relocation industry service providers have continued to expand their investments in self-service options; an effort aimed at increasing the overall customer experience while not replacing or impacting the core personalized service. On the client side, corporate client contacts today seek a myriad of self-service options ranging from status activity and general information to reporting and even processing and tracking of employee exceptions. On the transferee/assignee side, individuals are seeking convenient 24/7/365 access to their individual file status updates, the ability to submit expenses online and the ability to contact their relocation counselor via secure chat.
As an organization we, like the majority of service providers in the relocation industry, are committed to continued investment in self-service technology tools. They improve our efficiency and our overall service to the client and the relocating employee. We provide personalized, high-touch services to both corporate clients and relocating employees and we now look to strike the right balance between on-line tools and the foundation of our service, which is our people and the individual advocacy and assistance they provide. What is the future of self-service tools and will it impact the effectiveness of service to the employee?
Posted on 09/22/2009 in Technology | Comments (1)
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No Back-Ups. Really?
In a traditional corporate technology setting multiple tape backups are run at various intervals. Those physical tapes are then packaged and assumed to be moved to an off-site location. This approach, while effective five to ten years ago, presents numerous challenges as well as security concerns in our current computing environment.
First, the process of rotating media may have a significant impact on the environment. If the tapes are, in fact, being transported on a daily basis to an off-site facility, there is the carbon footprint from the provider traveling to and from the corporate location and physically transporting the tapes. And, there is the footprint of the production of tapes. Consider the following - If each server requires, at minimum, one tape in order to perform a backup and every server is backed up nightly as well as monthly, quarterly and annually, then we would be faced with 7 weekly tapes, 12 monthly tapes, 4 quarterly tapes, and 1 annual tape… 24 tapes in total per server. Multiply that by the number of servers in an organization, say 10, and you are looking at 240 tapes per year. And, these tapes are not full-proof. Like audio cassettes, you remember those don’t you, these tapes are also prone to wear. In addition to the time and cost to manage, we also have to consider the physical costs. A Sony 400 gig tape cartridge is available at an average cost of US$40, which would equate to US$9600 per year in just tapes, before you add in the expense of purchasing the drive and associated software.
Even if the cost is bearable for your organization, there are numerous security issues with this methodology. It is very difficult to prove chain of custody with tapes. They could be sitting, unsecured, waiting for the service to pick them up. What is stopping them from being stolen? Of course, you could invest in tape encryption, but are there other options?
Our organization relies on two SonicWALL CDP appliances that sit on our wire in two distributed centers to backup data. Our virtual servers are backed up to this consolidated appliance which, for all intention, has a massive hard drive inside of it. That appliance then replicates the data across the wire to a remote location. Therefore, in the event of a failure or need to recover data from backup, we can recover from the local appliance first. In the event of a true disaster, we access to the off-site appliance.
Posted on 05/11/2009 in Technology | Comments (0)
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The Positive Impacts of Virtualization: IT Goes Green
There was a time, just a few years ago, when our organization had one physical server for each major enterprise application, which means we had one server for email, one for print services, and one for database services…I think you get the idea. In all we amassed a large number of physical servers.
In addition to the basic costs of maintaining and managing a large network of servers, each of the units requires 24/7/365 operating power. And, they have to be kept at a consistent temperature, which means additional power resources to cool both the processor(s) inside the housing as well as the physical data center. Maintaining all of these servers in a 24/7/365 environment at peak levels equated to an inordinate amount of aggregated power. That was so 2007…
Since that time we discovered VMWare, the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter. VMWare released a series of server based products that allow an organization, like ours, to virtualize any number of physical servers into one single machine. Now, not only is all of our in-house technology housed on one physical machine that may be managed remotely, we also only have to power a single server.
While our decision to engage in server virtualization was based on the technical advantages, we also considered both the reduction in costs around the ongoing physical support in terms of power as well as the environmental impact of reducing our organizations’ carbon footprint. Now our data center rests at a comfortable 70 degrees Fahrenheit and the dedicated cooling system does not carry the substantial load required previously. After switching off all of the legacy on-premise servers, we realized a 37% reduction in electrical usage on a monthly basis.
Our new strategy provides us with enhanced client support, a reduction in overall management requirements, a reduction in overall costs, and we improve our social consciousness. If you’re considering moving to a virtualized environment, we recommend it!
Posted on 04/16/2009 in Technology | Comments (0)
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Technology and Communications: How Far We’ve Come and Where We’re Going
It’s amazing to reflect on how far communications technology has come in fifteen years. In 1994, we were still excited about the advent of the fax. As the 90’s progressed the cell phone and mobile communications began to take hold of society.
And then, the biggest change to our lives since the advent of the automobile - email! What did we do before email? How did we communicate with everyone we needed to each day, professionally and personally? Do you even remember life before e-mail? Remember, we used the phone and spent hours leaving messages and waiting for return calls. And, we communicated with less people on a daily basis. Email changed the way we communicate, adding convenience and expediting time and volume, but removing much of the emotion of speaking with someone in person or over the phone. What’s amazing is that today, nearly every generation has adopted email; Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y – email has become the nucleus, and some would argue the standard, for communications.
And now we have the next group of technologies entering the communications world; SMS (short message service, or text), Social Networking and IM (instant message). In the social networking arena, the primary groups are growing at an astounding rate. Facebook now has over 175 million active users. Are we moving to a world where intra company communication is conducted through a social networking portal, similar to Facebook? Are companies moving to a service strategy focused around SMS and IM? The answers to the questions are still undetermined, but with the employment of Generation Y, we can guarantee that changes will be coming in the future. Email will be replaced as the standard communications tool, even in the workplace, but by what? Only time will tell. It may be a combination of many mediums, or it may be something on the horizon that has yet to be introduced. Stay tuned and enjoy the ride!
Posted on 03/4/2009 in Technology | Comments (0)
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Introduction to the Role of IT in Corporate Sustainability
Technology Goes Green. Is this even possible? How can we continue to evolve our technologies internally and externally while reducing the impact on the environment? MSI is a company committed to corporate sustainability and, as such, we had to figure out how we were going to make a difference internally within the technology team.
According to Wikipedia, corporate sustainability is defined as “a business approach that creates long-term shareholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks deriving from economic, environmental, and social developments”. During our initial meeting, the traditional environmental ideas surfaced around recycling, reducing paper output (or the utopian idea of a paperless office), carpooling, and controlling lighting. We then pushed ourselves to think a bit further outside the box as we knew that there had to be a whole untapped area where we could be a key contributor. Over the weeks and months, this blog will outline several of the key technology evolutions that we have made at MSI. We’re going to begin with our internal transition to the use of web based conferencing for our marketing, business development, client service, and supply chain management teams.
MSI utilizes WebEx web conferencing services. WebEx is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cisco. The core WebEx services enable MSI team members to conduct meetings and events virtually, while maintaining live engagement and interaction. Through WebEx’s Meeting Center we are able to share content directly from our workstation(s) with any and all participants, regardless of their global location. Additionally, the services support full audio and video conference and even enable control of desktops to be passed from one attendee to another. Therefore, items such as Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Google Docs and other content are readily accessible and viewable by all parties. We also utilize WebEx for our e-learning series of webinars, Global Bridges and Real Estate Series.
Our investment in WebEx was centered on increasing the efficiency of travel and entertainment. A typical MSI user of WebEx Meeting Center saves over 430 hours of travel time (physically in the air) on an annualized basis and reduces their carbon footprint by 115,883 pounds or 52.54 metric tons per year. These results are based on a series of assumptions provided directly from WebEx and may be located at www.webex.com/carboncalculator.html. This footprint is solely based on the air portion of the trip and does not factor in rental car in meeting location; travel to and from the airport by the sales representative, and other downstream utilities that produce their own footprints based on their services being consumed.
Our experience with the WebEx product has been very positive. Our customers appreciate the flexibility it provides and it has enhanced our overall service delivery while reducing our negative environmental impact. It’s just one of the things MSI is doing to remain socially responsible.
Posted on 12/16/2008 in Technology | Comments (0)
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