“All of us thank you all for the help and unbelievably quick response”. Hearing this is like music to our ears. A client of ours had a major system / hardware failure last week. Their bills needed to go out the next day. Fortunately, they had a local consultant who was familiar with their system, and they had us ready to work with their local consultant. When our client called us, they weren’t concerned about the “solution we provide”; they were concerned about the outcome/result of our efforts. They (and we) were successful because they had the necessary resources available to them quickly.

As a manager, you are bombarded with information about all the things you should be doing to prepare for every conceivable threat. It’s easy to put off or gloss over disaster recovery planning. Coming up in my next few posts will be a ‘top ten’ list of things you should be doing even if disaster never strikes. Number one on that list is and always will be: have a reliable backup.

I know what you’re thinking. You purchased a really nice backup solution last year, and you’re in great shape. Great. Is someone in your organization actually monitoring the success or failure of your backup processes? Daily? When was the last time you actually recovered your data from a backup? If you needed to recover from two days ago, could you consistently reproduce your manual efforts since then? Now that you’ve turned on your heating system for the winter, is your server environment temperature controlled? Are multiple copies of your recent backups offsite?

If you can honestly answer all those questions, you are almost alone based on my anecdotal experience over 30+ years. I will swap unbelievable “war stories” with anyone out there. Having a reliable backup and having the resources to use that backup is not optional.

Unpaid furlough. Although no employee likes to have an unpaid day of work, it has become a reality for many municipalities around the United States. This is why every moment counts.

I find myself guilty of being stuck in my ways every now and again. I do our billing the same way each month. I have my steps that I follow and they never steer me wrong. What I do tend to forget is that technology and software are constantly changing. The changes are for the better and help speed things along. So I in turn, try to encourage myself to step back and think outside the routine steps. What are those time-saving features that have been released that I’m not putting to good use? We already went to outsourcing our statement printing and E-Bill / E-Pay. I learned that my billing reports are a breeze now that one set of prompts on my reports chains them together so they run one right after the next.

So think about it. What takes you the most time in your daily, weekly, and monthly procedures? Are there ways you can speed up some of those processes? Call your utility billing software techs or sales reps and ask them if there is something that you might be able to do differently. They’ll be your greatest resources in becoming more efficient. Over the long-term, you’ll save time and money, and you’ll enjoy your work more.

I’d like to think that every time I call for customer service I’m going to have my question answered quickly and on the spot. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks this. So, in the spirit of good customer relations I try to do the same when someone calls with a question. Now granted, I know I’m not going to be able to answer everything that comes through, so I know my limits and quickly pass the customer on to someone who can answer the question. Recently I’ve been wondering how I could speed up the answering process and if our clients sometimes experience the same problems.

There are the questions that you know are coming and could answer them without even opening the account information. Then there are questions that take a little more time and effort. These are the questions for which I’d like to improve my customer service. Usually there is some sort of account research involved and a little bit of problem-solving to figure out what went wrong. Once you’ve got it figured out, you give yourself a little pat on the back for solving the mystery. Then you continue on with your next customer or your next task and forget all about it.
Although these questions might be infrequent, you know they are coming. I’ve decided to stop reinventing the wheel. With my new cheat sheets I’m creating as Word documents and writing my own help in the customizable help screen in our Utility Billing Software application. So instead of just giving myself a pat on the back, I’m going to increase my efficiency and help myself.

In 1969, I ordered radial tires for my new car. Since most people had never even heard of radial tires, I was accused of being nuts. Over the holiday season in 1970, I ran into my aunt and informed her that someday everyone would have their own computer. Since we were still entrenched in the punch-card era, she really thought I was nuts. In 1984, I bought a Saab with a turbocharger and fuel injection. Most people thought I was nuts, and indeed, I should have waited a few years… It goes on. We were early adopters of Novell as a server operating system in the mid-80’s. We were early adopters for Citrix as a thin-client and remote access solution in the early 90’s. In 1995, I jumped on the FoxPro bandwagon for about 2 years (OK, so even I’m not perfect!). We were early adopters of SQL Server. Since it’s the end of the ‘00’s and we’re about to move to the teen years of the century, here is my earth-shattering prediction for the future:

The U S Postal Service will cease to exist, or go the way of the telegram. UPS and FedEx will continue to thrive. It will take a while, but all I see coming from the USPS is vastly more complexity for bulk mailers, higher prices and poorer service. The only thing keeping it alive is junk mail. In the Netherlands, most people have already (easily) opted out of receiving junk mail, which will undoubtedly happen here once we intelligently allow the same service. What will replace your mailed bills?

At some point in time, every utility will want to present their current and historical bills via email and online. As the cost for this service goes down and the cost for mailing and handling goes up, you should accept the inevitable and plan for the future. Or maybe I’m nuts.
Have a Happy 2010.

Why do unnecessary extra work? If someone else is willing to do something for you, then there really isn’t any reason to do it twice. I’m sure your organization receives numerous checks from different online payment services such as Metavante, Check Free, BA Merchant Services, First Data and Fisery. You receive the payment as a check (probably without a remittance stub) and process it as you would any other payment. Just think of how much easier your payment processing would be if entering these checks only took a few clicks and everything was done.

In an e-mail from a check payment processing company to one of our clients, it was stated that there were over 4,000 mutual customers and that in one month almost 2,000 individual checks were mailed. Just think of all the time and money that will be saved if you have all that information transmitted electronically! Think of all the time and frustration of processing those payments you’d save if your organization received all those checks in an electronic file format that can be processed through a file import into your software. All it takes is a few e-mails or phone calls to those payment processing companies that send you checks each month and a call to your software provider to find out how to get the process to import the file. The best part is it is a win-win situation for everyone involved. Oh, and you also save all those trees by going paper-free.