Case Study 19: Austin Energy's Billing System Can't Light Up

10:39 Amrie 5 Comments

Austin's Energy's Billing System Can't Light Up

Question 1:

Answer

• Austin and IBM project late completion, delay schedule, software bugs
• Complexity new billing system with 73 different interfaces

• Error of thousands of bills
• 65000 never received bills
• 35000 in accurate bills, overcharging

• Seriously impact business and customer
• Persistent system error from billing department
• Revenue loses

• Employee response one to one assistant for account accessing and correcting error.
• Called themselves as alpha tester

• Unable to access system online portal
• System causes a lot of problem, not friendly and hard time for customer.

• Billing software system failure

Question 2:

Answer

• Mostly affected is billing department.
• Difficulties of issuing bills because of billing software failure.
• Common error of customer not received bills, customer receive in accurate bills, account automatically cancelled.
• Incurred more cots in utilities and operation. Since business function is interconnected, one function failure gives impact of another function such as production.
• Business service is inaccurate, it give impact in revenue and profit even though they don’t have pressure of competitor.

• The department mostly affected.
• Employee work in high level of stress.
• Extra effort need to solve customer problem. They still need to serve customer better even though customer angry to show their disappointment towards the company.
• Employee also treated in the same way as usual, do not receive any appreciation from the company.
• Give impact of public relationship disaster.

• Company also faced difficulties in determining the actual sales since the system leads more error.
• Sales and profit decreasing.
• Company might face law suit for this issues. If it is happening, more cost to handle legal costs. It is bad for company since give negative impact in their legacy.
• Company also incurred more cost in advertising to give explanation to the public about what happen.

• Inaccurate financial report since the actual value of revenue and profit inaccurate recorded.
• Give impact of financial planning and investment.
• The project is delayed, suppose fully operational in early 2011 but it still not fully operational and incurred more cost.
• Management
• Wrong decision making of having IBM to develop the software as the bad experience IBM performance in inventory management.
• The service given by IBM is bad and disappointment.
• Need to train all employees with new technology.

• Mostly affected. 
• System also not user friendly, Austin portal also always have problem, customer cant access account information.
• Company also doesn’t think of their preference such as ability to choose time of the month that customer prefers to pay bills.

Question 3:

• IBM not really responsive to the problems.
• It made Austin Energy appealed so many times to IBM officials ranging from the managers of billing system project up to IBM CEO.
• IBM responsible in find the roof of problem, make system correction, test the latest system version and implement the system.

• Yes, Austin Energy is at fault for the problem. It is because:
• Austin Energy as a user had to be committed to the system.
• Probably, Austin Energy did not plan very properly in the project to develop the billing system.
• They must have clear and proper project management objective which should deal with five major variables: scope, time, cost, quality and risk.
• The agreement should clearly define the roles and responsibilities of both parties.

Question 4:

Answer

• Employee could not be committed enough and described as if they are alpha tester when they encountered bugs and issues that never have made it to a live version.
• Unable to meet customer satisfaction.
• No realignment internally and externally.
• Caused vastly on costs that exceed budgets.
• Fail to meet customer expectation.
• Lost trust draws customer away.

• No specific infrastructure.
• Unreliable system caused money loss.
• Did not work closely with third party vendors like oracle.
• Customers unable to access the system’s online portal.

• No strategy which cause time slippage.
• No business solutions.
• Interrelated with manpower.
• Repeating mistakes and delays.
• Improper project management objective.

Question 5:

Answer

• Overview of plant contents
• Current and future business organization
• Key biz process
• Management strategy

• Current situation and current business organization
• Changing environment
• Major goals of the biz plan
• Firm’s strategic plan

• Major system supporting biz function and process
• Current infrastructure capabilities
• Difficulties meeting business requirement
• Anticipated future demand

• New system project
• New infrastructure capabilities required

• Acquisition plan
• Milestone and timing
• Organizational realignment
• Management control

• Anticipated difficulties in implementation
• Progress report
• Budget requirement
• Requirement
• Potential saving
• Financing
• Acquisition cycle