Meltdown

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy
or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy



Last week you can’t have failed to be aware of the TSB systems and self-service meltdown from the 22nd April onwards, lasting well over a week. You may even have been caught up in it being a TSB customer or relying on TSB in some way. Luckily I don’t bank with them, but I had some fun with my teenage son, who leant a lesson on how when technology lets you down, it can do it big time.

As with most IT situations, it could have probably been avoided well before with better planning, improved testing, selective rollout possibly and thinking ahead. These are all things I encourage in my projects, as it makes for successful ones. A move to a proprietary Banco Sabadell internally developed system, (dating from back in 2000, originally called Proteo and later renamed Proteo4UK), was the target for this project.

There is a lot to be learned here.

The project was originally planned for 18 months, with 1,000 staff apparently to be involved in it. It was announced that 2,500 person hours were to be put into it. Often systems like this are very patched and my own experience of all the COBOL underlying the Littlewoods systems, in the late 80’s bears this out. Much of it was code from the early 1970’s. Many bank solutions are very similar and can be badly documented.

If adequate testing had been done, customers would not be accidently seeing others accounts, details and transactions. Very simple reconciliations, could have detected data conversion errors and balance differences. With suppliers I work with on data conversion, I am always shocked & surprised that standard reports and scripts to help reconcile data, balances, debits, status counts of repair orders etc are pretty absent and need to be tackled by struggling clients instead.

Shujun Li, a professor of cybersecurity at the University of Kent’s School of Computing was quoted as saying, "The scale of the problem we saw is incredible. It’s impossible if they had done systematic testing of the system. For me, it’s clearly a case of management, rather than purely a technical problem.”. That is true of many system and data migrations that go wrong in #SocialHousing.

The knock on effect is that a lot of customers are now moving from TSB, due to these issues. One was my own 14 year old son, who tried to deposit cash into his TSB account, at a cash machine and had both his card and cash retained. It did make me smile slightly, that his confidence in technology had take a hefty hit.

In Social Housing, if we have system issues, most of our residents are not going to up-sticks and vote with their feet however. We would not expect them to either.

However, if we have put a lot of effort into nurturing them on to self-serve and it suddenly goes wrong, we are encouraging those customers to contact us again by the more traditional methods. Just a small hiccup with posting delays of payments made on-line, can shake confidence if residents are not seeing these payments on their account and they appear (incorrectly) in arrears. Anecdotally, many then pay via the telephone, to a customer service centre team, because they perceive that as more ‘reliable’.

Introducing customers to interacting online is a hard slog. Don’t let an ICT or project meltdown, such as the TSB one described here, set your plans into reverse.  

Related Post: Test, test & test again, why UAT is your greatest friend 

Catch the blog monthly archive at https://soundcloud.com/housingitguy/

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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.

Gary Numan - Melt.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009


Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Could we help you or your organisation? Our contact details are here , get in touch we will be pleased to chat about your problems and help with your organisation issues.
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Save Me Toner

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy
or LinkedIn here uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/




Every time I order some new printer toner cartridges my eyes water. HP, Epson, Canon, Dell and Lenovo seem to have us by the short and curlies in the way these are priced. Do you buy the argument that because printers are cheap, we have to pay more for all the consumables? It's probably the same type of argument that the Phoebus cartel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel)  had about it all really being better for us consumers in the end.

Ever since reading Simon Garfields excellent book, "Just My Type", I have often wondered if any of the hype around eco-fonts is justified. About twelve months ago I remember a headline about the US Government could change from Times New Roman to Garamond, saving $370m a year. I don't know if they tried 'Pumice Disaster'.

As anyone who has ever used it knows, Garamond font is actually smaller at the same point-size compared to Times New Roman. that perhaps is where the bulk of that saving is. At the same font size it will use less ink, but you may have to up the font size in order to read it. So there's the catch.
You might have come across the Swiss cheese of fonts too, EcoFont.

As you can see, the fonts legible with some small holes saving about 19-20% of ink. Smaller type sizes seem to work best and the holes are barely noticeable.
A Ryman, free font, Ryman Eco is one of my favorite of these. I think this looks fabulous. Grab it at http://www.rymaneco.co.uk/ to try yourself.

In small sizes, the spaces are hardly noticeable. When larger sizes are used, it looks quite elegant.
Garamond, Courier, Century Gothic and Brush Script, in sequence of eco-friendliness, are the next best for cutting down on print toner and ink usage. 

All in all though, probably this all misses the point. If we actually managed to print less, we really tackle the problem of high cost. This is what I attempt to do, although it's still a bit painful when my printer fires up and spits out that printed sheet!

     Catch the blog monthly archive at https://archive.org/details/@housingitguy

Related Post: Are we missing a trick not seeing our tenants as customers? 

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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.


The Saints - Save Me.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009


Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here
Could we help you or your organisation? Our contact details are here , get in touch we will be pleased to chat about your problems and help with your organisation issues.
File Under: 360,1stTouch,4Js. , 07854655009 , ," """" ",,#UKHousing,#HousingDAY, #HomesForBritain, #Shout,1st Touch,3squared,Accuserv,Acutence,Aareon,Academy,ActiveH,AirWatch,Alignment,ALMO,Anite,Apex,ArchHouse,Archouse,asbestos,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Aurora,Average IT Costs,App,Associates,ACL,Abritas,AMS,AX,aspireview, BO,BPR,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Planning, Business Process Review,Business social networking, Blockwise, Block wise,BI,BancTec,BluTek,Bluebox, Castle,CBL,Cedar Open Accounts,Cx,Change,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics, CHR,Citrix,Civica,Clearview,CMS , CCS IT Keystone CCSIT,Civica Genero,Contractor Systems,CORE,CorVu,Cost Reductions,Covalent,CRM,Crystal Reports,CTI,CTX,Customer Relationship Management,Cashflow, COA,Coactiva,Codeman,Comino,Competitive Dialogue process,complex IT procurements,Component Accounting, Community Reward Services, Consilium, Consolidation, Consultancy,Consultant,Contact Manager,Context,CIH,Chartered Institute Of Housing,Cadcorp,Cerrus Saturn,convergeOne,CACI,CPL, CRS Director, Deeplake,Development Systems,Accuserve,Document Management,Documotive,datasystems , Microsoft dynamics GP 2013, DynamicAI, Dynamic AI, ECMK,EDRMS,England, English,EnterpriseBI,ERP Systems,ERP,Elmhurst,Estatecraft,EDM,ESRI,Exponential-e, Finance, Financial Systems, Financials, Factorwise,Facebook ,Footprint,Fusion, Getting best from,gotonysmith, Grasp,Grip,GeoSolveIT,GIS,GGP,Genero,HouSys,Housing software,HG,Housemark survey,Housing Blueprint,Housemark, HRA,HousingtITguy,Housing Support Pro,HousingSupportPro,Housing Options, Housing Group,hotpixuk, HousingIT,hotpix,Hardware,Hitex,Housing Contact Company,Housing Management Consultant,Housing Management Consultants, Impact Response,iPayPro,implementations,iRobot,In House,InHouse,In4,InMotion, InMotion2014, InMotion2015, InMotion2016 , Exhibition, conference, Infoflow,Information Technology,Informix,inHouse,in-house workforce, Innovation,Inside Housing,Internet Portal,Internetalia, Invu,Ireland,Irish,Inphase , IT Budget,IT Training,iWorld, Innovation Group Apex,ITIL, In4Systems Promaster,IT,Insight, iSupport,iSupportPro, Keylogic,Keystone,Kirona,Kypera,Keyfax, Ledgers,Linkedin,Locality,Liquid Voice, MD ,Mr Void , MrVoid, Measuring Change,Mebus,Miracle,MISCS, mobile functionality,Monopoly board images and pictures, Montal,MS Dynamics,MS Dynamics CRM2011,Miracle Software,MDM,Management Reporting,MI,M3,MIS,MIS-AMS,Mobysoft, Northgate Codeman,Neighbourhoods and Communities, Northgate,Notice,NROSH,NINTEX,NINTEX workflow,Natural Forms,Nintexworkflow, OA,OGC Buying Solutions,Ohms,OJEU Limits,OmFax,Omniledger,Open source software,open tender,OpenHousing,Opti-Time,Oracle,Orchard,Outsource and outsourcing,OpenContractor,ORS,OneServe, PIMMS Data Systems, Paloma,performance management systems,PfH, Pick,PIMMS,pimms4communities, Planned maintenance,People Value,Plus, Peoplevalue, PM,Progress,Promaster,Proval,Pyramid,PRINCE2,prince,Pamwin,PlanForm, Propoints, Pro-Points QL,QLX,Quiss,Qlikview, Registered Providers,Registered Social Landlord,Rent Increase Freezes,Repairfinder,Reporting,Reports,ROCC,RobotAutomation, Rocket,RPs,RSL,Reality,ReAct,reidmark,RM865, Saffron,SAP,Scots, Scottish,Scenario, Scotland,SDM,sector,TonySmithHou,Safron,Server Virtualisation,servicing, Servitor,Sharepoint,Simdel,Simdell,SimPro,Sim Pro,Slash and Burn,Social Media,Software,SQL Open Housing,SQL Reporting Services,SQL reporting services,SQL Server,Star rating,Stores and Stock,Strategic Asset Management,Sunguard ,Surveys,Sx3,System alignment, TonySmithHousing, Systemwise,SM,Sequoa,Serros,SP,Scout,score,Swordfish,Serengeti,SOTI,southview,Sunguard,Service Charges,Spotlight Service, Spotlightservice, SunAccounts Template,Task,Terminal Services, tonys , tonysm , tonysmi , tonysmith, tonysmitht, gotonysmith, tableau Business Dashboards, tonysmithth, tonysmiththa, tonysmiththat, tonysmiththath, tonysmiththatho, tonysmiththathou, tonysmiththathous, tonysmiththathousi, tonysmiththathousin, tonysmiththathousing,Tony Smith That,Tony Smith That Housing IT Guy,TonySmith that housing IT guy,tonysmiththathousing, tonysmiththathousinguy,tony smith housing guy,sharepoint, share point Three Star,Today,Total repairs,Tribal,Twitter,U2, tonysmith , tonysmiththat , thathousing , thathousingIT , thathousingITguy ,TED,Tagish Casework,TP Tracker,Telecetera,Tagra,Trace, Totalmobile, Total Mobile, UniClass Enterprise,Unidata,Universal Housing,Universalcredit, universal credit, universal credits,UC,Universe,Unrest, UK, United Kingdom ,Ukhousing,UK Housing, Van Stock,Voice and data,Vantage Sentinel,Version One,Visualmetrics,Voluntas, Wales,Welsh,Windows Server,Workflow and tasking,Wheatley,Works Connect,worksConnect, Xmbrace,XML ,XenApp,Xen App .

Wishing (I had a Photograph Of You)

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/

Are there any users of Yahoo Flickr out there? A lot of my work contacts take photos and many are on Flickr. I have been on there for about 4 years. If you are unfamiliar with it, Flickr is a photosharing website angled towards a photographic community. People on there know me as HotpixUK and I have nearly 6,500 followers and have had 1.5 million views on my 1,055 images.  I take my photography seriously and Flickr allowed me to make friends around the world, share techniques and tips etc.

It is a community of people bonded together by photography and few of my contacts I know in real life. Most I will never meet as they are in Iran, Argentina, India etc. It was a very clean and minimal user interface. Like a gallery. I pay £15 a year for a Pro account with stats and no ads.

If I go to The Tate, The Photographers Gallery in London, Bluecoat in Liverpool, Cornerhouse in Manchester, Ufizzi in Florence or the Louve in Paris, we see images/paintings/photographs surrounded by lots of wall or white space. That's how those things are best appreciated. There’s generally a caption telling us about technical or image details. Flickr previously focused on the image, caption, comments on it, groups it may have been added to and sets that the photographer organised images into.

I have completed a number of projects over the years and organised them into sets. I have one of the homeless winter night shelter in Warrington - http://www.flickr.com/photos/hotpixuk/sets/72157622888049236/ , various numbers 0-30 http://www.flickr.com/photos/hotpixuk/sets/72157629892831953/ and Edinburgh Festival Performers http://www.flickr.com/photos/hotpixuk/sets/72157631463655258/ among others. I am proud of my images and quite keen to show them off to anyone who might appreciate it.

Change is a constant and I am an agent of change. I am constantly involved with helping change systems that people use and the processes they use. Change generally is worth doing if it saves time, effort, adds efficiency, improves things. They work best if the target audience are part of that process and over donkeys years have had this confirmed, time after time. This prototyping enables tweaks to what is being proposed before we are ‘pre-maturely’ physical. That phrase sticks in my mind from my old lecturer at Manchester Poly, Ian Beeson. I think he eventually ended up at Bristol University Of The West Of England. Get in touch mate if you read this!

A design project I have involved with recently has involved lots of prototyping with wire-framing (maybe more on a future post on the attractions/benefits of that) and that effort will drastically remove doubt and slash development costs. I saw that myself with a HPM (Housing Process Management) project at my old MIS-AMS shop with ActiveH. 15 months of discussion and only 9 months of development got us 90% to where we needed to be. More jaw-jaw, not code-code (adapted from Churchill). 

Anyone who knows me will perhaps confirm that I am a bit of a ‘sponge’. Sit me near any customer, employee or user and before long my curiosity will mean I ask and try to understand the context in which people work. What they need, what’s important to them and who they are, what they feel. Only by knowing that, can something (a product, software, service) can be shaped around them successfully. There needs to be a channel of trust too. For me that was my mobile number. If any customer of mine was dissatisfied they could phone me directly, any time of day. I still do it today. I doubt if any other customer of a HMS (Housing Systems Supplier) has a direct line to their system suppliers director, and could rely on fast action to resolve issues via it? Customer relationships are the keystone to successful systems.

Yahoo did a radical redesign change to Flickr this last week on a Monday Night with no prior notification or seemingly understanding of their customer base. A help forum thread at http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157633547442506/ shows the extent of the response to this upgrade. Thea Lamkin, lead on the thread (http://www.flickr.com/photos/thealamkin/8744800801/ ) has tactfully disabled comments, as the only ones expected are negative ones.

Spookily enough she was clever to do this as over 24,000 Flickr users (so far as at 24/05/2013) have shared their opinion on how they feel about the recent ‘upgrade’. Unfortunately 98% of feedback has been less than complementary. For some reason the tempting carrot of 1TB of free (yep free, really free, like Wild Willy Barrett) didn’t calm the backlash. Tackling that one, anyone with even a slight photographic skill, will probably not want people stealing their shots on the net. So like me they probably post small watermarked versions with high JPG compressions (5 or 6). 1TB would only be useful if I could upload RAW format, which I can’t. Therefore a free TB makes a great headline, but is worthless to 99% of Flickr users.

No users to my knowledge were warned this was coming or had the chance to provide feedback of any kind. The new layout is very much ‘montage of images’ which is slow to load. There is limited emphasis on comments and sets, one of the keystones of what I found useful and other semi-serious photographers. Many of the forum comments describe how Flickr has been transformed to a Facebook timeline style. In many ways Flickr has chased the FB way. Surely though, if photographers wanted to post on Facebook they would be doing that already? Well I do, but rarely serious stuff that I want to share with a very different audience on Flickr.   

Worse than not telling folk, Flickr (and Yahoo) are not now listening either. Apart from above mentioned irritations, pages now take an age to load (at least here on my ADSL line in Warrington, Cheshire, Old England). I am not in silicon glen or silicon roundabout, so not seeing lightning downloads on my devices, I am afraid to report. Customisation options are not available either like in the past. I cannot have a gallery type view with white space or easy and fast to navigate thumbnails.Yahoo knows best.

I am acutely aware that we all need to turn a dollar. I visited the USSR in the 1980’s and inter-railed Prague, Yugoslavia & Bulgaria in the soviet era and accept that capitalism is not perfect, but can and does work, if we tackle it in a caring way. If Yahoo are needing to move to an ads model for all, just give us pro accounts for free, give us an ad in the top right hand corner and some stats. If we click through we make the 30p for Yahoo. For goodness sake though, don’t mess with the mechanisms proper photographers use on the site, like sets, notes, comments, tags, white space etc. Don’t bother suggesting you are building massive data centres Yahoo either, to give us all 1 TB. As your bean counters will already be aware, only 0.02% of Flickr users might find that useful.

A very revealing insight into the lack of understanding of Yahoo’s Flickr customers is to be seen right here:
Asked at a Yahoo press conference on May 17 2013 whether Flickr would be "shuttering" its Pro accounts, CEO Marissa Mayer said that she wanted "everybody to have professional-quality photo space", and that "there's no such thing as Flickr Pro because today, with cameras as pervasive as they are, there's no such thing, really, as professional photographers". In response to "outrage" from professional photographers, Mayer apologized via Twitter for wording her answer "terribly", saying that she was referring to the changes to Flickr's storage space and the number of photographs that people take.

I find that quite insulting. I sell quite a number of images. 90% of people roaming the streets with an iphone, Galaxy or whatever who upload dozens of images a day, could never produce that type of stuff, or have images published.
Its ignorance. Understand your customers and you understand your product Marissa.

I am happy moving on however, search for ‘HotpixUK’ on Google and I am sure you will find me. Let’s see if Yahoo wakes up to the mistake that they have made here. There are plenty of Flickr alternatives more focussed to photographers, I will mourn the loss of my valued contacts, but here are some of the more tuned in alternatives:

http://www.technewsdaily.com/18170-3-flickr-alternatives-for-disgruntled-photographers.html
http://www.ipernity.com/apps/gm
http://www.smugmug.com/

I was so happy with Flickr up to last week, but now I find myself looking seriously at other places. Yahoo may becoming the 21st century version of Lycos, Flickr like Geocities. The moral of this blogpost is respect your customers. Remember we have two ears and only one mouth. More listening is what we are made for. Get into your customers minds, understand their needs, fears and aspirations. If you don’t, you may be toast. Little more than a footnote over at the internet archive, that's where you are heading Flickr, I am afraid.





You can link with me on LinkedIn here - uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/ It would be great to connect !

A Flock Of Seagulls - Wishing (I had a photograph of you).


(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, please get in touch and let me know!

File Under: 360,1stTouch,4Js,Aareon,Academy,ActiveH,Alignment,ALMO,Anite,Apex,ArchHouse,Archouse,asbestos,Asprey e-state pro,Asset Management,Aurora,Average IT Costs,BO,BPR,Browser Applications,Business Objects,Business Process Review,Business social networking,Castle,CBL,Cedar Open Accounts,Change,Cheaper Housing IT,Chics,
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