The idea here is to improve the quality of the service delivered by the Operations Team in a department responsible for the distribution of Variable Marketing Payments.
This team primarily creates programmes to generate the discount premiums to customers.
Following a Customer Satisfaction Survey it has been raised that the Quality of the service needs to improve. The knowledge of the business and the system is limited, therefore the team is not in a position to advise better practises to customers in order to maximise their premiums according to the customer's specific requirements. This issue has been discussed several times with Senior Management who has now acknowledge that there is an issue and wants a plan to resolve this.
My proposal is to run this as a formal project, Operational Quality Improvement Project, which at least requires:
- Business Case - actual issue, costs, business options, benefits, risks...
- Planning - tasks and timescales to achieve the prime goal...
- Implementation and Control
Unfortunately, Senior Management does not consider this as a Project because it's not software related (incredible!!!), they believe this is something that can happen on the fly.
I strongly believe that in order to improve the quality of the programmes delivered the team requires a better understanding of the business, the system and the different usage thus training requirements from an expert in the subjects are a MUST. This training has costs implications; hiring an expert and the time that the team will invest on training sessions would impact the creation of Variable Marketing programmes. Again, planning is required to mitigate the impact to our customers. Finally, we would also need to monitor the success of the project, for example by reissuing Customer Satisfaction Surveys.
Do you have any suggestions to support my proposal to Senior Management? What other aspects should we need to take into account to present this as a formal project?