An IT consulting company platform intent on organizing customer technical assets, credentials, and solutions into a web-accessible knowledgebase.
CONCEPT TO APP
Many of the services performed by the IT company were either invisible or not well understood by the company's customers. This gap in knowledge made invoices difficult to explain at times, especially when a large amount of work was performed for preventative maintenance or major incidents.
To build customer relationships around integrity and trust, the company invested in several initiatives aimed at improving service recall, transparency, and collaboration between consultants.
Developed by in-house talent and an occasional contractor, these initiatives self-organized into a solution with four basic services, which increased in value through each iteration: Time Entry, Issue Tracking, Asset Wiki, and Asset Database.
From its earliest incarnation, this resource made the company's work defensible, and as it grew, both the company and customers experienced savings in recall, knowledge transfer, and onboarding.
Time Entry
This Python/PostgreSQL-based webapp raised the accuracy and recall of customer service visits by receiving SMS texts from Nokia phones and converting common shorthand codes into full text for tracking notes and times.
Its goal was to link the app with QuickBooks and the issue tracking service.
Issue Tracking
The issue tracking web service used Trac for creating a knowledgebase of solutions that could be shared among techs as problems arose.
Work like "Setup/Patch/Config Windows Server 2003" performed by one tech for one customer tracked procedures, references, and issues. The documentation could then be found and refined by other techs performing a similar procedure elsewhere.
It also improved the company's ability to provide detailed answers customer invoice questions.
Its goal was to allow customers to view research and technical documentation alongside invoices on work performed.
Asset Wiki
The asset wiki web service allowed techs to collect and update constantly changing customer goals and tech assets. It provided quick access to everything from service tag numbers to hard drive replacement dates.
Some customer wikis provided single click access to device, user, and network drop information from hyperlink tags on AutoCAD-based office floor plans and server rack elevations.
Some wikis also included Visio-based network architecture diagrams.
The goal was to integrate with the asset database as a secure one-click web accessible front-end to information by customers and techs in the field.
DEVICES - FLOOR PLANS
DEVICES - SERVER RACKS
Asset Database
The Microsoft Access database provided custom front-end forms and reports for managing customer contacts, users, device assets, credentials and notes.
The goal was to move the back-end data to PostgreSQL and integrate the data more closely with QuickBooks for invoicing, marketing, and service contracts.
Responsibilities
Led initiatives from ideas to operations through an informal, non-Agile but iterative "eat your own dog food" development and testing process informed by daily business needs.