The DOBlog

Good news

Keyboard arrived today (July 30th) just before 13:00. Spent lunch swapping out keyboard. Can now type Quality again without pausing….

….received phone call at 14:00 from Dell tech support to confirm that I’d received the keyboard and that I’d been able to swap it over without difficulty.

Excellent ‘within-warranty’ customer service - my only issue is with their on-line form and the processes that support it which changed my name and required me to re-enter a lot of information Dell would (should?) already have about me.

Bad news

The question I’m left with now is why has it taken Dell 5 months to address the other more substantive issue, the one where the laptop wasn’t built to specification and they have not yet remedied that situation?

The time and cost clock on this instance of non-quality is still ticking. The number of Dell staffers I’ve dealt with is still growing. The root cause of this whole issue is an information quality problem which could easily be avoided. Ergo, the costs involved and time-hassles involved could have been avoided if the relevant information process had functioned correctly and, failing that, if the corrective processes had operated efficiently.

On the subject of Information Quality, I’ve attached a copy of the article Common Law and IQ Governance. It’s a break from a series I’m writing based on my experiences with Dell with regard to my graphics card. I’ll be presenting on this and related legal topics in Information Quality (or should that be related information quality topics in law?) at both the IDQ Conference and the IRM UK Conference and will most likely be using this whole issue as a case study, highlighting the various legal issues that it raises (compliance with EU Distance Selling Regulations, Data Protection, Contract Law, Negligence etc.). To read the rest of the articles in this Quarter’s IAIDQ newsletter go to http://www.iaidq.org and join the IAIDQ (if you aren’t already a member).

As I have had no further substantive contact from Dell (John was well meaning but nothing seems to have come of it) and as it is over a month since graphics card number 5 was supposed to have been sent to me I’ll be meeting my legal advisors this week to discuss next steps.

Conference season is upon us in the Information Quality Community…

At the end of September I’m off to Las Vegas to deliver a presentation at the IAIDQ’s North American conference the IDQ 2007 Conference.

At the end of October I’m off to sunny London for the IRMUK Data Management and Information Quality Conferences. This will be my sixth year at this conference and my fourth as a presenter. This year I hit the ‘big leagues’ with a 3 hour tutorial on some of the legal aspects of Information Quality, going head to head with Larry English (amongst others)on the time table.

Then in November the Irish CoP of the IAIDQ, the IQ Network will be hosting our IQ Forum… we’re planning it to co-incide with World Quality Day on the 8th of November to tie in with some IAIDQ events that will be taking place world wide.

Who knows, maybe I’ll meet somebody from Dell at one of those conferences who might be able to fix my laptop problem before Christmas.
That would be nice.

So for shits and giggles I decided to google Dell Hell and Ireland. (The wife is out for the night, I’m bored, it seemed like a good idea at the time).

http://www.google.ie/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLF_en-GBIE226IE228&q=dell+hell+ireland

To increase the sample size, I removed the reference to “Ireland” and instead googled for “Dell Hell Information Quality”… frack me, there I am again - the top 2 (tonight, 27 July 07).

http://www.google.ie/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLF_en-GBIE226IE228&q=dell+hell+information+quality

So to be fair to Dell I removed the reference to “hell” to see how the DoBlog might fare with the Great Search Algorithm in the sky. This was a ‘positive control’. Wasn’t I pleasantly surprised when I was again the top 2 listed links on this day…

http://www.google.ie/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLF_en-GBIE226IE228&q=dell+information+quality

Not yet in Damien Mulley/SkyHandling Partners/”the server cannae take it Captain, she’s goin’ te blow” territory one can always dream…

I googled a few other combinations… for “Dell quality Information” I was results 3 and 4 out of 16,800,000. That was a very neutral query. Still other combinations were picked but I can’t be bothered typing them … the screenshots below will show you the story.

What I learned is that I am missing a very important tag from these posts… “Dell Quality”. That will be fixed tonight.

Also by googling for Dell Quality and Ireland I found this pdf of a Dell presentation. I was interested to read this quote from Michael Hammer (Business Process Re-engineering guru) towards the end of the slides… I’ve highlighted a few words that leapt out at me.

“ The 21st Century Belongs to the
Process Organization Centered on
Customers and…Operates With
High Quality, Enormous Flexibility,
Low Cost, and Extraordinary Speed.”

With regards to my broken keyboard Dell are hitting the marks on this one. Quickly dealt with, within the agreed time period - the failure of the delivery is down to me… (sorry Dell, I’ll sort it out as soon as I can).

My Graphics card issue however is a result of a failed process (assembly) as a result of poor quality information (either the assembler didn’t know to put in a 256mb card or couldn’t tell a 128mb card from a 256mb card) which has dragged on now for five months (which is extraordinary speed, just not in a good way). The fact that the issue still isn’t resolved and I’ve got a second ‘Customer Advocate’ from Round Rock Texas on the case now is indicative of how wide of their goals Dell are.

(A big shout out to Rick and John… hope you guys are reading this as you reached out and I believe you have done your best to help with my situation. Elizabeth in Dublin… if you are back in the office could you PLEASE respond to the last few emails I’ve sent you as they are quite important… the email address you gave for the person who was covering for you kept bouncing back.)

Joseph Juran, the Quality Management guru put it very well:

“They thought they could make the right speeches, establish broad goals, and leave everything else to subordinates… They didn’t realize that fixing quality meant fixing whole companies, a task that cannot be delegated.”

Joseph M. Juran, “Made in the USA: A Renaissance in Quality”, Harvard Business Review, July 1, 1993

Deming’s Point 10 tells us “Eliminate slogans, exhortations and numerical targets for the workforce since they are divisory. The difficulties belong to the whole system”.

Firefighting does not improve quality, especially when the fire is let smoulder on for nearly half a year (and a whole new product launch).

I have others but I can’t be bothered to put them up… I think my point is made.

Perhaps Dell should consider getting in contact with the knowledgable practitioners in the International Association for Information and Data Quality (www.iaidq.org) who might be able to share some pointers on how to address the root causes of this problem.

The other guy’s story

Came across this on Tom Raftery’s blog. Looks like Tom’s guest writer Frank P had ‘issues’ with Dell when trying to buy some kit off them. A barrier had been created that prevented him from buying a machine from the UK Dell outlet store simply (it would seem) because the UK uses sterling and the Irish Republic uses the Euro.

This does not seem to be a problem for Marks and Spencer, who will happily charge my credit card in Euros or Sterling when I am buying bits and bobs when on trips to London. Nor do the people in the UK I’ve bought stuff from (including a laptop and spares for my guitar) on ebay have any problems selling to the Republic of Ireland just because we use Euros… they let paypal sort the currency conversion for them and whammo the wifey has a new toy and I can get back to trying to hammer a few tunes out of my much abused fender strat.

Quality is about meeting or exceeding customer expectations. Deming advises us in his 14 Points to ‘break down barriers between departments’. To meet FrankP’s request, Dell could have simply charged him a slightly higher fee to cover currency conversion costs and transport from the UK (chances are the machine is in a warehouse in Ireland though…). Bingo- one sale, one happy customer. The barrier might have more to do with internal accounting for products by the market they are sold to… but that is a supposition on my part.

The economics of this ‘non-quality’

If I’m right, that is just crazy and is an excellent example of how ’stovepiped’ management of ‘battling business units’ is a fricking recipe for disaster in most businesses and how such artificial barriers to delivery of quality products or service should be torn down.

It’s like having a football team with defenders who won’t pass the ball to their strikers who are in the box with a clear shot on goal and the keeper off his line just because the strikers are paid in Euros while the defenders get their cheques in sterling. (Jaysus, I think that was a football metaphor.. not sure what it means or if it makes sense but it reads well).

If you have ’seconds’ stock or ‘returns’ you have inventory on hand. That costs money to store and if not sold costs money to dispose of. The longer it is stock on hand (in a warehouse gathering dust) the faster the resale price is dropping (due to obsolescence and the entry of newer/better products into the market at the original price point) and the less likely you are to recoup the cost of production, cost of storage and other related costs. Eventually the inventory becomes ‘below-zero’ in that it will have cost you more than you’ll make by selling it… resulting in declining profit margins.

In order to reduce the costs to your business you should really be trying to sell that fecker to anyone (within the bounds of the law) who comes knocking/calling/writing as soon as possible without putting seemingly petty administrative barriers in the way. Doing so results in a business process that does not meet the expectation of the customer and as such is not a process that delivers ‘quality’. Furthermore it creates a risk of negative profit margins in the business.

Instead Dell got a blog post on a highly trafficked blog (Tom Raferty’s)written by a respected professional pundit on the IT industry and Web2.0 trends (not an amateur by any stretch) where through various comments the customer service issue is discussed at length. And then that post is in turn linked to by me, with my particular perpsective on the issue.

And for all we know the laptop still sits unsold in its cold warehouse shelf, unloved and spurned by the new Vostros and Inspirons that swank by with their swish coloured lids and ‘more bang for your buck’ specifications. Stick a red nose on that laptop and call it Rudolph. It won’t be let join in any laptop games I can tell you.

My saga continues

I have had and continue to have my issues with Dell. Currently I’ve been dealing with John, one of their Customer Advocates, Elizabeth (a Dell Ireland person) and half a dozen others over the past 5 months. At this rate I’ll probably have spoken to more Dell employees than Michael Dell himself by the end of the year.

To cap things off (no pun intended), the ‘Q’ key on my keyboard broke off on Tuesday (too much angry typing of ‘Quality’ I fear and the end of my career as a ghost-writer for James Bond novels unless I do some business re-organisation of MI6 or cut back on the gadgets).

HAPPY NEWS

I contacted Dell support and was dealt with promptly. I was informed I’d have the keyboard today. I arranged to work from home to be available to take delivery here. Unfortunately I missed the call from the courier and will need to try to rearrange delivery (hopefully I can get it tomorrow rather than having to work from home Monday as well).

Crappy News

This is the GOOD NEWS. The BAD news is that some strange things happened to my information as it bounced around Dell Customer Support. For one, they changed my name.

Here is the email I received yesterday informing me of delivery:

Dear Mr. Brien,

Thank you for your reply.

Your call has been logged, and your reference number is [edited out by me]. Keyboard will be with you on next business day, between 09.00 and 17.30 (or other local working hours). If you are office based then please advises your reception of the expected Courier visit. You will be contacted in the event of any unforeseen delays.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to assist you. Your case number for this interaction is [edited out by me].

Thank you again for contacting Dell Hardware E-Support.

“BRIEN” That’s not my name. That annoys me. That’s not good information quality. Why not?

Well, Dell’s on-line Tech Support form looks like this (once you key in the asset tag that identifies your machine)

I’ve blocked out the asset tag for my machine (for privacy) and you’ll need to click on the thumnail to see the full image but you’ll need to for the rest of this to make sense…
Note the first two mandatory fields:

I won’t go into why this is a bad labelling convention that is Anglo-centric (Given Name/Family Name are better)… for now it is enought that Dell’s form has distinct fields for my Firstname (given name): DARAGH and my Lastname (Family Name): O Brien. That’s what got typed in there. So why/how did Dell decide that the “O” in my name was surplus to requirements?

Attention to the little details (like getting my name right or ensuring that my laptop ships with the correct graphics card installed) are evidence of a coherent and congruent quality culture. Soundbites, slogans and self-contratulatory marketing materials don’t build such a culture. The IAIDQ is a professional organisation that exists to support the development of ‘Information/Data Quality’ as a management discipline. Their website is www.iaidq.org and Dell employees (or anyone for that matter) will find some useful information there about the root causes and real impacts of these types of problems

But back to the happy path

That said… the tech support guy Guaran was great in sorting out the replacement keyboard and I am kicking myself I missed the couriers call when it came bang on schedule.. when you’re good you’re good.

The Irish Government have again trundled out a proposal to force mandatory registration of pre-paid mobile phones. It is stated that this will be a wonderful weapon in the war on drugs, organised crime and pixies.

There are two small problems with the proposal as it currently stands.

1. It is unlikely to work as the politicians claim it will
2. It is unlikely to work as the politicians hope it will

Now, technically, this is just one problem but it is such a doozy I thought it would be worth mentioning at least twice.

The reason it is unlikely to work as the politicians claim it will is that in order to ensure that the Register of Mobiles does not become filled with Michael M. Ouses or I.P Freelys the process will require some form of validation of name and address. In order to mitigate the risk of forged or fraudlent documentation being used (which would result in Mr Freely freely getting his fone phraudulently phone fraudulently) this documentation will need to be of some ‘official’ form.

For Bill Pay phones the usual documentation required is a passport or drivers licence (a work ID on its own is not usually sufficient in my experience) and a utility bill - these prove you are who you say you are and you live where you say you live. In order for the Register of Mobiles to meet the stringent evidentiary requirements that the stated purpose require (to deter criminals using mobiles and to assist in tracking and apprehending them via their mobile records) then a very high level of validity and verifiability will be required of the information used for identification purposes when the phone is being purchased.

The majority of Ready-to-go customers would seem to be children and teenagers (I’ve lost track of the number of phones my teenage sister-in-law has had over the past few years). They may not have a passport, are unlikely to have a driver’s licence (until they are in their late teens) and are extremely unlikely to be in possession of a valid utility bill in their name.

So how will they register their phones? Are the Government proposing that the phones would be registered to the parents of these children and teenagers? What then if the child is involved in some criminal activity? Does the parent become a suspect because of the mobile phone records?

“I didn’t beat up little Johnnie… I’d left my phone at home. My ma hates Johnnie - she must’ve done it!”.

One solution proposed to this (which according to the Irish Daily Mail came from Civil Servants in a review of this idea update– thanks to Antoin at eire.com who has a blog post which quotes the Dept of Communications on this topic) would be to implement the Register of Mobiles only after a National Identity Card was introduced in Ireland. In theory, this would give a standardised, State-backed identity (and possibly a unique identifier for the person). However there are no current proposals to implement such a card and previous proposals have met with opposition from various quarters.

A further issue is that name and address data ages over time. People move house, get married, get divorced or die. What mechanism will the Government require to ensure that the information registered on the Register of Mobiles is maintained accurately and in a form that meets or exceeds the evidentiary requirements of the legal system? This is not an issue for bill Pay phones as if the bill ceases to be paid the phone is cut off… and if the bill is still being paid but the address is no longer valid the Authorities have other investigative avenues open to them (such the payment records). For ‘ready-to-throw’ mobiles this is and will be a critical problem. Not only can the person move address, but the phone may ‘move person’ by being swapped, loaned or shared between family members (this may happen with bill pay phones but it is reasonable to assume that in the case of a bill pay phone the ’sharing’ or ‘lending’ of the phone would be temporary).

Currently we have a very important national register of people which is collated and maintained for a very serious and important function in the operation of the State. It’s called the Electoral Register and, not to put too fine a point on it, it has some ‘issues’ with the quality of the information there-in and the levels of duplication and inaccuracy in the data. What confidence should we have that the Government will have learned the lessons of the Electoral Register in the design and implementation of any new Register of Mobiles?

I am not saying we should not require registration of pre-pay mobile phones (all operators currently encourage registration through ‘free credit’ bribes). However if we are to require citizens to give up elements of personal privacy and provide information about their mobile phone usage to State Agencies then it is essential that the system work as it is intended it will and that the information captured meets or exceeds the expectations of the politicians, the police and, most importantly, the citizen. Crucially this must happen with out the information captured being excessive or irrelevant to the stated purposes for registration.

If we require people to provide information into a system and set of processes that will eventually degrade into an unmanaged cacophony of inaccurate, incomplete, inconsistent and otherwise just plain awful data rather than a symphony of polished, reliable and policed information then we will have achieved nothing other than a layer of paperwork and a burden on mobile phone operators and their customers. Those with criminal intent will pervert the system - foreign SIMS, imported phones, stolen phones etc.

By definition they don’t play by the rules.

The counting of votes for the Irish Senate begins today. As a graduate of the National University of Ireland, UCD I had expected to have a vote. As a member of the Alumni Association (and a regular recipient of the lovely colour magazine produced by the University Alumni office) I should have received my ballot paper by registered post.

My wife is also a graduate of the same university and likewise has given the Alumni Association her current address (which happily is the same as mine).

Neither of us have received ballot papers. Unfortunately I ran out of time to chase this up with the University authorities but…

…if they can send me the Alumni newsletter to my home why didn’t I get my ballot paper? These were supposed to have been sent by registered post, so I would have expected a ‘non-delivery’ notice from An Post if we weren’t there.

Perhaps the State Electoral register isn’t the only electoral register which has ‘issues’? I wonder if any other UCD graduates failed to receive their Senate ballot papers?

Breaking News.ie reports this morning on a Sunday Tribune story that Tom Parlon, former junior minister in charge of the OPW, is to lead the Construction Industry Federation in a legal challenge against the policies of the OPW on awarding fixed-price contracts.

This is a policy that he championed while in Government. He is quite likely to have a very in-depth familiarity with any internal debates and briefings that might have been conducted with regard to the communication and operation of this policy.

It is this access to and familiarity with internal policy formulation that requires civil servants in ‘designated positions’ to wait 12 months before taking on roles in the private sector.

Arguments to the effect that Tom Parlon was sacked as Junior Minister by the electorate when he was not returned as a TD and as such no ethical issues arise are tenuous at best. The logic of this conflation would appear to be that the electorate voted Tom Parlon out of his ministerial office directly (and by extension elected the Taoiseach’s brother in to replace him).

The election was not a vote on Mr Parlon’s conduct as a junior minister but on his ability to out-campaign his political opponents in his electoral consituency. In that he failed to achieve his goal. Even if he had been re-elected there is no guarantee that he would have retained that junior ministry (perhaps he would have been given another role in Government). Would it have been ethically acceptable for him to take on the CIF role as a back-bench TD with no ministerial role in the OPW?

Mr Parlon failed to be elected, he was not sacked by the electorate. His constituency opponents out performed him (in particular Brian Cowen who got 27% of first preferences) and he did not regain his seat. A consequence of his failure to be re-elected as a TD is that he is no longer a junior minister and is at a loose end. This loose end he has tied up by taking a well paid position with the CIF.

There are doubtless other roles he could have taken on that would not raise the question of ethics. However he opted to take on a role that requires him to round on policies he championed in his previous role, perhaps drawing on knowledge he might have gained in that role which raises the question of ethics and the standards we expect of the political masters of the Civil Service.

It was announced yesterday that Dell are cutting 100 jobs in Ireland. Hmmmm…

Dell is a company in trouble that is desperately trying to reinvent itself. However, my experience is that Dell is a company that is also deluding itself and incurring potentially large amounts of avoidable costs through poor management of processes and poor information quality.

Regular site visitors may remember my “Dell Hell” posts. I haven’t posted much on this recently, which may give the impression that this issue has been resolved.

Has it f**k. 5 months after I took delivery of the laptop Dell still have not completed manufacturing it to the specification I ordered. I am dealing with a single named person in Dell at this stage. 4 weeks ago I spoke to her and she undertook to send an other graphics card to me. She then emailed confirmation that she had done this to my work email address (which I’d specifically asked not be used).

4 weeks (and 2 emails from me) later I haven’t had an acknowledgement or confirmation that anything is happening and I still don’t have the laptop I ordered and am paying for. This is NOT rocket science but Dell can’t get it right.

To date I estimate that on a €1500 laptop Dell have spent the best part of €1000 to not fix my problem and continue to piss me off. If we assume that the laptop cost Dell €1000 to assemble & sell in the first place (assumes a 10% markup on the ex-VAT price) then Dell have LOST €500 (50% of cost of sales) on me as a customer.

50% of cost of sales. That’s a lot isn’t it. And all as a result of poor quality information and poor quality process management.

For my part I’ve gotten a few articles out of this and a few blog posts…

Articles:

• Information Quality and the Bottom Line (Part 1)
  - written for the IAIDQ e-newsletter, circulation to over 15 countries
• Article on Information Quality for Running Your Business Magazine - May edition (national circulation to SME’s in Ireland)

Silver linings I have… all they’re seeing in Dell right now are clouds.

50% of cost of sales… f**k me - if I had a business doing that badly I’d fold my tent and bugger off as well.

+++Update+++
Via The Register I found this story about Dell’s new moves to reinvent itself. Reading down through it I found the following quote. Apparently Dell…

“..expect to ship customers a complete product. We’re not going to finish off products at customer sites with our services business.”

Whaddefook? Why then am I still waiting for a techie to come and finish building my consumer Inspiron laptop (at my premises)? I would have expected that it would have been built to spec in the factory…

Tom Parlon, one of the former PD TDs and bookie’s favourite to take the leadership once the paperwork about the PD consitiution requiring the leader to be a sitting TD was sorted out, has resigned. He has been head-hunted by the Construction Industry Federation. As ever, there is much comment on this over at IrishElection.com
The fact that in the 29th Dail (the one was dissolved before the election that he failed to get re-elected in) Mr Parlon was the Junior Minister with special responsibility for the Office of Public Works does not, it seems, raise any potential for conflict of interest in Mr Parlon’s view. The OPW is responsible for state construction contracts and has an annual budget of €630million. Mr Parlon has stated that

“The whole tendering process in the OPW was completely separate from the minister. Individual companies tender and the OPW is obliged to accept the lowest tender. I never had any involvement in this.”

However it is standard practice in the Civil Service for a ‘cooling off period’ of 12 months to be applied before a civil servant who may have had a ‘designated’ position (as defined in the Ethics Acts) goes to work for a private sector firm that might have dealings with their former department. In any case the Civil Servant must notify the Standards in Public Office Authority. In the private sector ‘gardening leave’ is often applied to staff who take jobs with competitors. This is simply good ethical practice and avoids the implication that there may be untoward influence applied in the conduct of business. This is precisely the point raised by Transparency International.

The question is - does the Junior Minister fall within a category of people who might have a ‘designated position’ under the terms of section 20.2 of the Civil Service Code of Standards and Behaviour? Given that any other such person would draw their authority from the responsible Minister by way of delegation I would argue that this might be the case. (The legal eagles over at McGarr Solicitors or Tuppenceworth can feel free to correct any errors in my interpretation of the legalities/ethics here.)

Mr Parlon’s defence that he was seperate to the tendering process holds less weight when one considers that any Civil Servant in the OPW who had a ‘designated’ position (defined in the Ethics Acts) would need to cool their heels for 12 months and that any Civil Servant in the OPW who was taking up employment in the private sector in a firm that they might have had official dealings or which might gain an unfair advantage over competitors as a result of that employment would need to notify the Outside Appointments Board. The direct involvement of the Civil Servant in a particular process is not a requirement for the notification to the Outside Appointments Board.

This scenario is not addressed in the advisory booklet on the Ethics Acts for ‘Office Holders’ (which Mr Parlon, as a Minister for State/Junior Minister, was) so he might be excused for overlooking the ethical gap here. Perhaps the €250,000 per annum salary on top of his TD and Junior Minister pension has distracted him from the fundamental issues.

However the question is a simple one - do we hold the Servants of the State (Civil Servants) to a higher ethical code than their leaders? If a senior Civil Servant from the OPW resigned (or was dismissed as Mr Parlon was in effect) and promptly took up a senior position with a lobby group for the Irish Construction Industry Federation would that go unchallenged or be so easily dismissed as a non-issue?

Mr Parlon says that the PDs will survive as they have some ‘young blood’ coming through local authority councils. However with no likely candidate emerging to lead a party that has had the stuffing knocked out of it in the Election one must wonder who will lead the ‘young bloods’ and remould the party into a vibrant and relevant voice. The speed with which Mr Parlon has grabbed this particular lifevest should surely give these ‘young bloods’ pause for thought.

Perhaps Tom Parlon is simply working on fulfilling his destiny to lead people who will ‘build a better Ireland’ but he has realised it is the brickies, plumbers and plasters rather than the PDs who have a better chance of achieving this?

Ethics be damned. He’s on a mission from god.