Supporting our Customers

When meeting the customer and discussing the day-to-day issues I often stumble over 'desupported' software versions.  Most of the time the friction starts when the customer is trying to approach support in case of a stressful event - system down - .

The real problem starts when the cause of the problems needs development attention and relates to software in 'sustaining support' the discussion usually ends quickly with 'please upgrade to a supported version' so we can proceed with our help.

I agree this is a very shortsighted answer unfortunately in many times the only right one. But.... in reality there is simply no time for an upgrade so "please upgrade" is the last thing you like to hear.

Therefore the theme Supportability gets a lot of attention in our teams.  Usually the first question I ask when the 'hot-potato' surfaces is 'how did you implement the version management process in your IT department' and WHO is responsible for maintaining this ? The reaction on the faces of the IT managers often explains more then words can tell.

My 'simple' advice is to make sure you have your strategic systems on your radar. Make sure you know the product-lifecycle dates (of the compete stack so database, middleware and (third party) application.

Agree on your plans with the user community (the business). Once agreed, take the plan to action when you are planning for your maintenance-downtime.

To complex .. afraid for the impact of required upgrades ? do not postpone till the first real system crash... request for help - you are not the only one dealing with this challenge.

Next time we meet, when you have lifecycle management embedded in your standard process, I hope we can discuss topics that can really improve your ROI.

p.s.   more info on the Oracle product lifecycle (we call the lifetime policy) can be found on our website

Thursday morning I opened my mail and found this promising mail '2 customers and 2 escalations'.    Because I learned that escalations are potential opportunities I quickly opened the mail.

Without going in too much details I would like to share the common denominator from these mails and customers.

As many other customers this time of the year(year end) , these particular ones where approaching an important milestone in their go-live. The weekend following on the Thursday these companies where planning an upgrade and installation of a new piece of software.

Obviously, during the planning for the weekend the project team ran through the open 'blocking' issues and saw some dark clouds ahead. 

Instead of doing internal investigation with all stakeholders (and there are many in these kind of situations) and make a proper plan of attack,  they turned to the software vendor for a solution and .....  ended in my mailbox. 

As we are in support are ofter considered as 'last resort' we know how to deal with this and could manage their situation. We address the issues (not solve them..) and made sure the weekend planning could continue.

What you can learn from this small anecdote is that since milestones are there to be met, realize that this only works if you properly plan ahead with a focus on possible continuity issues.  There are always surprises waiting for the project team that surface when you least expect them. 

Make sure, in the relationship with the service organization, your vendor is aware of your planning as well. For support issues, put this expectations in the service request so we can plan and prioritize as well. Know that there are many ways of getting extra attention for you priority problem and your technical people should be aware .

Most important learning (as usual) : it all starts with communication between you and support.


Hope to get different mails in the future ;-)    !


Hans


p.s. Consider to attend/download one of the regular planned support trainings like the 'Working Effectively With Support'  sessions where all aspects around our processes ad the way we treat priorities are being trained.

If you follow the IT press you should know that Oracle has now acquired 30+ companies over the last few years. If we look more careful it seems that we have not completed this journey yet.  The strategic acquisitions added a lot of technical expertise to the Oracle family and this family has grown rapidly over the time.

For you as customers this change brings a lot of changes in the way to work with support. This is exactly the challenge we are trying to solve at the moment.  

Since last year Support embarked on a mission to consolidate all support systems, processes and knowledge into ONE single system.  Internally we call this project 'Orion'.
For the customer this should bring one face to support  (MetaLink 3.0)  with one standard (internal) process to deal with.  Internally this means that all 5000+ support people, 10+ problem/knowledge management systems will move to one single call-center software based on standard Siebel software (yep we drink our own champagne as Tom (Siebel) used to say) 

Till now (November 2008), we consolidated PeopleSoft/JDE, Hyperion and Siebel in MetaLink 3.0 and we have launched 'My Oracle Support' providing you with a flavor of new features and a new interface for the 'traditional' Oracle bloodstream.  In fact we now have 2 systems (or 3 if you count the classic interface from MetaLink 2).  In 2009 we will see the finalization of this huge project when the Oracle eBusiness Suite and the Oracle Server teams migrate.

From then we are 'again' one big support community supporting all your products/solutions through One support process....