Establish and Maintain Client User Liaison

LO1. Determine support areas

1.1 Determining core business of the organization

An organization or organization is an entity comprising multiple people, such as

an institution or an association that has a collective goal and is linked to an external
environment.

An organization is a social unit of people that is structured and managed to meet a need or
to pursue collective goals.

All organizations have a management structure that determines relationships between the
different activities and the members, and subdivides and assigns roles, responsibilities,
and authority to carry out different tasks. Organizations are open systems--they affect and
are affected by their environment.

Organization is a broader term, as it includes businesses and other groups of people not
organized for commercial purposes.

A business organization is an individual or group of people that collaborate to achieve

certain commercial goals. Some business organizations are formed to earn income for
owners. Other business organizations, called nonprofits, are formed for public purposes.
Clubs and sports teams are examples of non-business organizations.

These businesses often raise money and utilize other resources to provide or support
public programs. Business organization is to focus on each word separately.

Organizations have a specific structure and hierarchy. People and systems create a culture
within the organization and guide its operation. Different organizations have different
policies, work flows and objectives.

There are a variety of legal types of organizations,

including corporations, governments, non-governmental organizations, political
organizations, international organizations, armed forces, charities, not-for-profit
corporations, partnerships, cooperatives, and educational institutions.
The core business of an organization is an idealized construct intended to express that
organization's "main" or "essential" activity.
Core business process means that a business's success depends not only on how well each
department performs its work, but also on how well the company manages to coordinate
departmental activities to conduct the core business process, which is;
1. The market-sensing process Meaning all activities in gathering marketing intelligence
and acting on the information.
2. The new-offering realization process Covering all activities in research, development
and launching new quality offerings quickly and within budget.
3. The customer acquisition process all the activities defining the target market and
prospecting for new customers
4. The customer relationship management process all the activities covering building
deeper understanding, relationships and offerings to individual customers.
5. The fulfillment management process all the activities in receiving and approving
orders, shipping out on time and collecting payment.
To be successful, a business needs to look for competitive advantages beyond its own
operations. The business needs to look at the competitiveness value chain of suppliers,
distributors and customers.

Internal Business Process Chain

A good friend, business mentor(experienced person) and coach once told me that every
successful business needs three things.

1. Make a product or service.

2. Market the product or service to customers.
3. Manage the money.

In this context we can divide all business processes into three categories:

 Core activities- are the essential, defining activities of an organization. If

the organization gave those activities to an external party, it would be creating
a competitor or dissolving itself.
  Critical but non-core activities, if not performed exceptionally well, will place
an organization at a competitive disadvantage or even create a risk. There are many
examples of companies' failures to manage their logistics processes adequately
leading to product shortages and loss of market share. Logistics is a critical but non-
core activity for a producer, but it is a core activity for a transportation company.
 Non-core, non-critical activities supply no competitive advantage. Even if
performed poorly, they are less likely to seriously harm an organization in the short
term, although they are still important. Examples include cleaning, catering
and security.

1.2Identification of the organization stakeholders

A “stakeholder” is any person or organization that is actively involved in a project, or

whose interests may be affected positively or negatively by execution of a project.

A stakeholder is anybody who can affect or is affected by an organization, strategy or

project.

A stakeholder is any person, organization, social group, or society at large that has a
stake in the business.

A “stakeholder” can be-The project manager, sponsor, team, customer, suppliers,

creditors, employees, unions, city, community, geographic region, professional
organizations, individual or group impacted by the project, Internal or external; local or
international organizations.

Stakeholders can be internal to the organization or external. In many projects the public at
large will become a stakeholder to be considered during the project. The challenge for the
project manager when the public is a stakeholder will be to act while considering public
needs.

A project manager must be sure to identify and list all potential stakeholders for a project.
Potential stakeholders include but are not limited to: Competitors National communities
Employees Professional associations Government Prospective customers Government
regulatory agencies Prospective employees Industry trade groups Public at large (Global
community) Investors Shareholders Labor unions Suppliers Local communities
The project manager must document relevant information for all identified stakeholders.
This information may include the stakeholder’s interests, involvement, expectations,
importance, influence, and impact on the project’s execution as well as any specific
communications requirements.

It is important to note that although some identified stakeholders may not actually require
any communications, those stakeholders should be identified.

When identifying stakeholders and rating their level of interest and involvement in the
project, it will become important to use some sort of a tool — a rating scale, an influence
diagram, or a chart form to identify the level of power, influence, interest, or impact that
the stakeholder may have on the project.

Identify Stakeholders process has the following Inputs:

• Project Charter High-level document that authorizes the project and assigns/authorizes
the project manager’

• Procurement Documents Identifies procurement contract stakeholders

• Enterprise Environmental Factors Consideration factors such as culture, systems,

procedures, industry standards

• Organizational Process Assets Consideration factors such as templates, lessons learned,

stakeholder registers from former projects

Identify Stakeholders process uses the following Tools & Techniques:

• Stakeholder Analysis Gathering and assessing information to determine whose interests

should be taken into account for a project

• Expert Judgment ,Expert technical and/or managerial judgment (from any qualified
source)

The Identify Stakeholders process has the following Outputs:

• Stakeholder Register A document identifying all project stakeholder information,

requirements, and classification
 • Stakeholder Management Strategy Defines the approach to increase stakeholder support
and reduce negative impacts represented in a stakeholder analysis matrix

In order to rate each stakeholder’s importance and impact on the project you need some
form of stakeholder analysis. Stakeholder analysis focuses on the stakeholder’s
importance to the project, and to the organization, the influence exerted by the
stakeholder, plus stakeholder participation and expectations.

The following is a list of some of the common tasks associated with the Identify
Stakeholders process:

1. Identify and document a list of all project stakeholders

2. Validate the Stakeholder Register (list)
3. Create a high-level approach for communicating with all stakeholders
4. Define your responsibilities as project manager, and those of other
stakeholders.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY STAKEHOLDERS AND THEIR

INTERESTS?
Stakeholders are those who may be affected by or have an effect on an effort. They may
also include people who have a strong interest in the effort for academic, philosophical, or
political reasons, even though they and their families, friends, and associates are not
directly affected by it.

 Primary stakeholders are the people or groups that stand to be directly affected,
either positively or negatively, by an effort or the actions of an agency, institution,
or organization
 Secondary stakeholders are people or groups that are indirectly affected, either
positively or negatively, by an effort or the actions of an agency, institution, or
organization
 Key stakeholders, who might belong to either or neither of the first two groups, are
those who can have a positive or negative effect on an effort, or who are important
within or to an organization, agency, or institution engaged in an effort.
Stakeholders’ interests can be many and varied. A few of the more common:
  Economics. An employment training program might improve economic prospects
for low-income people, for example. Zoning regulations may also have economic
consequences for various groups.
 Social change. An effort to improve racial harmony could alter the social climate
for members of both the racial or ethnic minority and the majority.
 Work. Involving workers in decision-making can enhance work life and make
people more satisfied with their jobs.
 Time. Flexible work hours, relief programs for caregivers, parental leave, and other
efforts that provide people with time for leisure or taking care of the business of life
can relieve stress and increase productivity.
 Environment. Protection of open space, conservation of resources, attention to
climate change, and other environmental efforts can add to everyday life. These
can also be seen as harmful to business and private ownership.
 Physical health. Free or sliding-scale medical facilities and other similar programs
provide a clear benefit for low-income people and can improve community health.
 Safety and security. Neighborhood watch or patrol programs, better policing in
high-crime neighborhoods, work safety initiatives – all of these and many other
efforts can improve safety for specific populations or for the community as a whole.
 Mental health. Community mental health centers and adult day care can be
extremely important not only to people with mental health issues, but also to their
families and to the community as a whole.

WHY IDENTIFY AND ANALYZE STAKEHOLDERS AND THEIR

INTERESTS?
The most important reason for identifying and understanding stakeholders is that it allows
you to recruit them as part of the effort. The Community Tool Box believes that, in most
cases, a participatory effort that involves representation of as many stakeholders as
possible has a number of important advantages:

 It puts more ideas on the table

 It includes varied perspectives from all sectors and elements of the community
affected.
 It gains buy-in and support for the effort from all stakeholders
  It’s fair to everyone
 It saves you from being blindsided by concerns you didn’t know about. It
strengthens your position if there’s opposition.
 It creates bridging social capital for the community
 It increases the credibility of your organization.
 It increases the chances for the success of your effort.

WHEN SHOULD YOU IDENTIFY STAKEHOLDERS AND THEIR

INTERESTS?

 If you want to involve stakeholders in a participatory process, the reasons are

obvious.
 If your intent is a participatory action research project, stakeholders should be
included in any assessment and pre-planning activities as well as planning and
implementation..
 If you want your process to be regarded as transparent, stakeholder involvement
from the beginning is absolutely necessary.
 If your effort involves changes that will affect people in different ways, it’s
important that they be involved early so that any concerns or barriers show up early
and can be addressed.
 In situations where there are legal implications, such as the building of a
development, involving stakeholders from the beginning is both fair and can help
stave off the possibility of lawsuits down the road.

HOW TO IDENTIFYING STAKEHOLDERS

 Brainstorm. Get together with people in your organization, officials, and others
already involved in or informed about the effort and start calling out categories and
names.
 Collect categories and names from informants in the community
 Consult with organizations.
 Get more ideas from stakeholders as you identify them.
 If appropriate, advertise.
STAKEHOLDER ANALYSIS/STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
Stakeholder analysis (stakeholder mapping) is a way of determining who among
stakeholders can have the most positive or negative influence on an effort, who is likely to
be most affected by the effort, and how you should work with stakeholders with different
levels of interest and influence.
Most methods of stakeholder analysis or mapping divide stakeholders into one of four
groups, each occupying one space in a four-space grid:

STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT
Stakeholder analysis is only useful if it’s used. Stakeholder management is where analysis
and practice meet. It allows you to use the analysis to help gain support and buy-in for
your effort
EVALUATION OF THE STAKEHOLDER PROCESS
Here are some evaluation questions you might consider:

 What could you have done to better identify stakeholders?

 Which strategies worked best to involve different populations and groups?
  How successful were you in keeping people involved?
 Did you provide any training or other support? Was it helpful? How could it have
been improved?
 Did your stakeholder analysis and management efforts have the desired effect?
Were they helpful?
 Did stakeholder involvement improve the work, effectiveness, and/or political and
community support of the effort?

The answers to these and similar questions could both help you improve the current effort
and make a big difference the next time – and there will be a next time – you involve
stakeholders.
1.3Identifying organizational structure, culture and politics

Organizational structure
Organizational structure is a system used to define a hierarchy within an organization. It
identifies each job, its function and where it reports to within the organization. This
structure is developed to establish how an organization operates and assists an
organization in obtaining its goals to allow for future growth. The structure is illustrated
using an organizational chart.
Organizational structure is
typically hierarchical arrangement of lines of authority, communications, rights and duties
of an organization.
Organizational structure determines how
the roles, power and responsibilities are assigned, controlled, and coordinated, and
how information flows between the different levels of management.
An organizational structure defines how activities such as task allocation, coordination
and supervision are directed towards the achievement of organizational aims. It can also
be considered as the viewing glass or perspective through which individuals see their
organization and its environment.
Organizational structure allows the expressed allocation of responsibilities for different
functions and processes to different entities such as
the branch, department, workgroup and individual.
Organizational structure affects organizational action in two big ways :
1. It provides the foundation on which standard operating procedures and routines rest.
2. It determines which individuals get to participate in which decision-making processes,
and thus to what extent their views shape the organization’s actions.

Organizational structures can take many forms. These are influenced by factors such as its
purpose, size, the complexity of the tasks it performs, the external environment and its
culture. Its products, services or where it is located also determine which structure is best.

organizational culture

An organizational culture reflects the shared values within the organization that impact
employee morale, communication and, ultimately, success. Companies use formal
processes and activities to influence culture, such as social activities to promote
teamwork. However, much of an organization's unique culture evolves through informal
channels. For example, a company's culture can be affected by the way employees
communicate during lunch, breaks and other informal encounters.

The values and behaviors that contribute to the unique social

and psychological environment of an organization.
Organizational culture includes an organization's expectations, experiences, philosophy,
and values that hold it together, and is expressed in its self-image, inner workings,
interactions with the outside world, and future expectations. It is based on
shared attitudes, beliefs, customs, and written and unwritten rules that have been
developed over time and are considered valid. Also called corporate culture, it's shown in
(1) the ways the organization conducts its business, treats its employees, customers, and
the wider community,
(2) the extent to which freedom is allowed in decision making, developing new ideas, and
personal expression,
(3) how power and information flow through its hierarchy, and
(4) how committed employees are towards collective objectives.

Organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, which

governs how people behave in organizations. These shared values have a strong influence
on the people in the organization and dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs.
Every organization develops and maintains a unique culture, which provides guidelines
and boundaries for the behavior of the members of the organization.

The seven characteristics of organizational culture are:

1. Innovation (Risk Orientation) - Encourage their employees to take risks and

innovate in the performance of their jobs.
2. Attention to Detail (Precision Orientation) - Employees are expected to be accurate
in their work.
3. Emphasis on Outcome (Achievement Orientation) - Companies that focus on
results, but not on how the results are achieved, place a high emphasis on this value
of organizational culture
4. Emphasis on People (Fairness Orientation) - Great deal of importance on how their
decisions will affect the people in their organizations.

5. Teamwork (Collaboration Orientation)

6. Aggressiveness (Competitive Orientation) -Dictates whether group members are
expected to be assertive or easygoing in the marketplace.

7. Stability (Rule Orientation) -Rule-oriented, predictable, and bureaucratic in nature.

Organizational politics
The pursuit of individual agendas and self-interest in an organization without regard to
their effect on the organization's efforts to achieve its goals.
Organizational politics is itself similar to a game, one that requires an assumption of risks
just like any contact sport. "It must be played with diligence and a full understanding of
the landscape, players and rules."
Organizational politics can be a nasty business where people promote their own self-
interests at the expense of company goals. It can also be secretive, and it can cause us to
doubt the intentions of other people.
1.4 Analyzing existing organizations’ information technology
Information technology systems are used by organizations to perform various tasks. Some
use IT to provide for the basic processing of transactions, while others enable customers,
distributors and suppliers to interact with the organization through various communication
technology systems such as the internet.
The term ‘’information technology systems in an organization ‘’ is composed of four
distinct parts which include: an organization, information in an organization, and
information technology and information technology systems in an organization.
Below I have listed some of the impacts of information technology in an organization.
 Flow of Information: What information describes might be internal, external, objective
or subjective. External information describes the environment surrounding the
organization. Objective information describes something that is known. Subjective
information describes something that is currently unknown.
 Transaction processing(TPS): is a system that processes transactions that occur
within an organization. TPS will update any transaction process and store that
information in a database
 Decision support(DDS): is designed to support decision making when the problem is
not structured.
 Workgroup support: creating an information sharing environment, workers can easily
consult each other across different department without any interruption.
 Executive support: An executive information system (EIS) allows managers to view
information from different angles.
 Data Management: An organization stores all its relevant data on a database.
 Communication: Communication is a great tool in business develops, with advanced
communication tools, employees and managers can easily make beneficial decisions in the
organization.
 LO.2 Develop support procedures
2.1Procedures and techniques in determining the level of support for the
organization/business

This element covers the development of support procedures for the new system you have
implemented in an organization. In the first element Confirm Requirements, you
determined what technology needs to be supported, identified the key stakeholders, the
organisation's structure and culture and the level of support they require. You are now
ready to develop the procedures for providing this support and document all of this in an
agreement with the customer.

1 Confirm Requirements

This element covers material relevant to the support of existing Information Technology
Systems in a business environment.

A 'system' could be a website, application/s, hardware and the associated procedures.

Information Technology is a very broad term that includes things like distributed and
centralised database applications, websites, telephone systems, point of sale systems,
printers, faxes, mobile phones and any other electronic device you might think of.

Often when you have helped a business implement a new system, you will also be asked
to help support the system. This competency will help you develop a systematic approach
to identifying the technology to be supported, negotiating an agreement, developing
support procedures and providing quality support in accordance with your agreement.

2 Verify Support Needs

You should contact the organisation and check that you have got everything - i.e. that you
have listed all the hardware and software that needs support and that all of the key
stakeholders have had input into your list.

Verification is a quality assurance technique. You will not only do it before you draft the
agreement, but after as well. If you are thorough with your consultation, you will be less
likely to miss things.

3 Establish Procedures
Incident Management (for help desk) is actually the best way of answering this
question.Typical Incident Management involves the following steps:

In the diagram, the user contacts the help desk or other support position. The help desk
receives the call or contact, prescreens and authenticates it. Prescreening and
authentication mean establishing that the call is a genuine problem from a person that is
eligible to receive support. It also involves giving advice about problems that are currently
affecting all users (server outages for example).

Procedures - questions to be answered

Developing procedures for each of the incident management functions involves answering
the following questions:

 What will be done? (the scope of the procedure)

 Who will do it?
 How will it be done? (eg onsite, over the telephone)
 How long will it take?

In addition, we need to know the answers to the following in order to establish the overall
support procedures:

1. What is the primary method of contact? (eg phone, email, fax, web)
2. When and by whom will the procedures be reviewed?
3. What performance targets are set by the procedures? (eg respond to priority 1
requests within 1 hour)
4. What reports should be generated by the support function?
5. How will the support function be reviewed and improved?
When you have answered all of these questions, you have basically written your
procedures. All that is left to do is to put them into a standard format.

These documented procedures can then be used as part of the agreement with your client.
An agreement has traditionally been called a contract. However, as delivering I.T. Support
is a service and a business expense that Managers often want to monitor and measure, it
has become popular to use a SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT to document the type and
level of support, the procedures and targets that must be used and achieved.

Documenting procedure and service level agreements

A service-level agreement (SLA) is a part of a service contract where a service is
formally defined. Particular aspects of the service - scope, quality, responsibilities - are
agreed between the service provider and the service user.

A service-level Agreement is an agreement between two or more parties, where one is the
customer and the others are service providers. This can be a legally binding formal or an
informal "contract" (for example, internal department relationships.
Service level agreements are also defined at different levels:

 Customer-based SLA: An agreement with an individual customer group, covering all

the services they use. For example, an SLA between a supplier (IT service provider)
and the finance department.
 Service-based SLA: An agreement for all customers using the services being
delivered by the service provider. For example: mobile service provider
 Multilevel SLA: The SLA is split into the different levels, each addressing different
set of customers for the same services, in the same SLA.
 Corporate-level SLA
 Customer-level SLA

 Service-level SLA

Some metrics that SLAs may specify include:

 Availability and uptime -- the percentage of the time services will be available
 The number of concurrent users that can be served
 Specific performance benchmarks to which actual performance will be periodically
compared
 Application response time
 The schedule for notification in advance of network changes that may affect users
 Help desk response time for various classes of problems
 Usage statistics that will be provided.

Lo3 Assign support personnel

3.1Identifying IT Skills Support Activities

Assign Support Personnel

Seeds or plays on table. (Unique.) Your "support personnel" (those who have exactly two
skills, but no special skills) may report aboard your compatible ships that have two or
more staffing icons. Once each turn, you may discard objective to download a "support
personnel" (once per game per Personnel card title) to your matching ship that has two or
more staffing icons, or to your matching facility.
Contact
An individual's private or personal information by which another person, business,
or entity can use to reach the individual. For example, a company database may have
its employees' private and public contact information for purposes of reaching an
employee for various reasons.

Term used to describe reaching out to or being in touch with another person, business or
entity. For example, a salesperson may contact another person or business for a
potential sale.

A contact center (also referred to as a customer interaction center or e-contact center) is a

central point in an enterprise from which all customer contacts are managed.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO CONTACT POTENTIAL PARTICIPANTS?
It's important to contact new members simply because they are usually not going to walk
through the door, or show up uninvited, though that can happen. Normally, they're not
going to come to you. You'll have to go to them. To put it plainly, most new members for
your group or organization will need to be recruited. The main question in this section is
"How should I recruit them?"
There are at least three basic methods to choose from:

 You can meet them face-to-face

  You can call them on the phone
 You can write them a letter
 send a fax, or an e-mail message
 You could send a fact sheet, flyer, or brochure.

C OM B IN IN G D IF F ER E NT M ET HO DS
At this point, we have good news (we hope). It is possible to combine these different
methods of contact together. For instance, you can...

 Call, then write

 Call, then set up a meeting
 Write, then call
 Write, then set up a meeting

And, to expand the point, you can add a third stage as well. That is, you can call after you
have sent a letter, or write after you have met. In other words,

 Call, write, call, or

 Call, meet, write

Frequency of Meeting (Consultative Meeting)

Your health and safety committee should meet regularly. The frequency will depend on
the:
 volume of business;
 size and spread of the workforce;
 type of work done in the workplace and their associated risks; and
 issues to be discussed and other relevant factors.

Identifying Milestone
A milestone is an objective or major event that often requires many smaller tasks to be
completed before it can be deemed complete. It is a large outcome that encompasses all
the work that went into it.

A milestone is a significant event in your life. Often a milestone marks the start of a new
chapter. For example, the day you graduated from high school was a milestone in your
life.
Milestone literally refers to a roadside marker that lists the distance to a particular
location. These days, the word is more often used figuratively to refer to significant events
in life, like graduating from college or getting married. It acts sort of like the road sign: it's
often a moment when you reflect on where you stand in life. A milestone can also be a
nonpersonal event that results in a big change, such as a milestone victory or a company's
sales milestone.

Project's Milestone
A Milestone is a reference point that marks a major event in a project and is used to
monitor the project's progress. The milestones for a project should present a clear
sequence of events that will incrementally build up to the completion of the approved
project.

A milestone is an objective or major event that often requires many smaller tasks to be
completed before it can be deemed complete. It is a large outcome that encompasses all
the work that went into it. Tasks would be the smaller, though no less important things
that you completed in order to make that milestone happen.

Collecting Feed back

Feed back is Process in which the effect or output of an action is 'returned' (fed-back) to
modify the next action.
Feedback is essential to the working and survival of all regulatory mechanisms found
throughout living and non-living nature, and in man-made systems such
as education system and economy.
In an organizational context, feedback is the information sent to an entity (individual or
a group) about its prior behavior so that the entity may adjust its current and future
behavior to achieve the desired result.
Feedback occurs when an environment reacts to an action or behavior. For example,
'customer feedback' is the buyers' reaction to a firm's products and policies, and
'operational feedback' is the internally generated information on a firm's performance.
Response to a stimuli(such as criticism or praise) is considered a feedback only if it brings
about a change in the recipient's behavior.
Feedback guides and informs your decision-making and influences your
product roadmap. It’s also essential for measuring customer satisfaction among
your current customers.


Ways to gather customer feedback

1. Email/Contact Forms
2. Surveys
4. Interviews

5. Social Listening(media)
6. On-Site Activity (What are your users telling you without telling you?)
7. Comment Boxes

8. Response Cards
9. Customer Incentives

Types of Feedback
Effective

 Goal is to get student to internalize the effective feedback to use the suggested
strategies independently on future work.
 Feedback that is intended to be used by the learner to independently move their
reasoning to the next level.
 Criteria-based phrases are used to describe the strengths and weaknesses of the
learner’s work.
 Limits feedback to one or two traits/aspect of quality at a time.
 Students should have an opportunity to “redo” their work based on the effective
feedback.
 “I agree with the pattern that you have identified in the table. I am not convinced
that the rule you wrote works for all the values in the table. How could you prove
this?”
Descriptive

 Goal is to improve student achievement by telling the learner how to move forward
in the learning process.
 Feedback that is intended to tell the learner what needs to be improved.
 Feedback isn’t as effective in getting students to move forward in the learning
process.
  “You accurately found the number of students in 4th grade who said chocolate ice-
cream was their favorite. You now need to divide this number by the total number
of students to get the percent who said chocolate ice-cream was their favorite.”
Evaluative

 Goal is to measure student achievement with a score or a grade.

 Feedback that is intended to summarize student achievement.
 It does not give guidance on how to improve the learner’s reasoning.
 Since it is not intended to move students forward in the learning process, it can be
given on summative assessments.
 “Your explanation of your work is the best that you have done. Nice use of
sequence words in your explanation.”
Motivational

 Goal is to make the learner feel good.

 Feedback that is intended to encourage and support the learner.
 It does not give guidance on how to improve the learner’s reasoning.
 Since it is not intended to move students forward in the learning process, it can be
given on summative assessments.
 “I like how you completed the assignment.”

Compiled by F.W