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October Monthly Implementation Planner

Initiative

What was released last month

Coming this month (What’s planned for release in the next 30 days)

General Updates on Key Projects

Blockers (Issues getting in the way or slowing things down)

Initiative

What was released last month

Coming this month (What’s planned for release in the next 30 days)

General Updates on Key Projects

Blockers (Issues getting in the way or slowing things down)

bP20

Start of bP20 pilot in Kenya

Togo received 5 samples

Ongoing Alpha testing in DRC

 

bPower20 pilot result

Mass production begins

New light connectors rolled out concurrently with bP20’s

RW to recieve bP20 order

bPower20 units and grid chargers are being shipped to NGUs

 

bP300

N/A

Bp300 rollout in Orange DRC

What It is: 105 V1 products that come with a 100L fridge and 40 inch TV

Why it is important: This will help the NGU understand this market segment use cases and the correct product size

 

Iron:

The iron has been approved for production. Trial order will be available in December 2020.

Fridge:

Fridge power consumption tests have been completed . The next update is to change the temperature gear setting which will be done in October.

Bboxx KE

Go to market strategy shoud be completed so testing can start

 

 

bP50

Parabolic Antenna

DRC testing 50 locally sourced units

Over-voltage Alert - Rollout RW

What it is: An alert that checks for products that are over charging

Why it is important: If these products are left with customers there is risk of a thermal event. They must be removed from the customers through a technician Visit.

32 Inch Tv

What it is: Bboxx is increasing its TV range by introducing a 32 inch TV

Why it is important: This will increase ARPU for the NGUs

30 units will be shipped to DRC mid-Oct for trial.

Lithium

Lithium battery development is on going and on track.

Subwoofer

Subwoofer is now open to orders for all NGUs

32”TV

Production of trial order is complete, samples shipped to DRC

 

Parabolic antenna

DRC will start testing the samples by 7th October.

 

Next Generation Pulse

 

Competitor analysis and spec sheet: comprehensive document showing what you get with Pulse, differences between current Pulse and new Pulse, and comparing features across competitors

New customer account: spent significant time designing the foundations of the new customer account and new pay plan options. This is ongoing

 

Managing Field Staff

Manual Portfolio Bonus Tool

  • What it is: it is a tool designed to help the NGU that wanted to use different metrics, not just Contract Performance as it is today in ERP.

  • Why it’s important: It has been clear that the current portfolio bonus based on Contract Performance is ineffective. Because:

    • It is a difficult metric to understand and action.​

    • It is difficult for customers to recover from a low CP (because CP is cumulative), and therefore not actionable for the agents

  • How to get it:

Customer payment page updates:

  • What it is: It’s a page in the PULSE Web App showing the customer information that is reserved for the payment details.

  • Why it’s important: it gives the user much customer payment details that were requested by the NGUs such as (days-to-ESF, the amount required to reach ESF, Payment status, performance band, amount due, customer balance, transaction history)

  • Note: This is was supposed to be released last month but due to some bugs found during the UATs, it wasn’t released. But it should be released this month.

  • How will it look like - Please follow up with James for more info

     

Rebuild Agent App with New Format​

This project was divided into 3 phases, and the user stories for Phase 1 were created, and 3 of them are already selected for the development.

 

Fighting Fraud & Enforcing Payment (@Anthony Mabonga)

Control Units Disabled by Default:

  • What it is: control unit won’t switch on until stock has been assigned. We have begun rolling this out in all markets.

  • Why it’s important: This prevents loss, by preventing people from taking out perfectly functioning CU’s from the shop without first assigning them to a customer. For example, the technician can no longer forget to record an installation: it won’t switch on until stock is assigned. This is available now.

  • How to get it:

Credit check for upgrades, Phase 1:

  • Update: The new sales app that contains credit check is currently being piloted with a few sales agents in Kenya, Machakos shop. Rollout is expected early October in Kenya and late October in Rwanda.

  • What it is: agent app will use a “machine learning” predictive model to determine which customers qualify for upgrade or not.

  • Why it’s important: Currently upgrades are a net loss for the company. This will make them a net gain. So will be a huge improvement for NGU profitability

Collection Rate and Utilization Rate improvements in Portfolio and Finance dashboards:

  • Collection Rate (currently known as % recurring cash) and Utilization Rate will no longer include defaulters to align with Financial models used for NGU budgets. The potential impact on CR and UR numbers to be communicated to NGUs and other stakeholders ahead of the release

  • We will start reporting on Total Utilization Rate broken down to its component parts (payment, bonus, manual, enable time) to enable NGUs better explain short-falls in cash collections

Free Stock Assignment: Development has started, so progress is ongoing. This project will allow you to assign stock to a technician without linking it to a customer, to enable “same day installations.”

Credit check for upgrades, Phase 2: the initial version, in the agent app, will be released in October. The next step will be to include the credit score in the Pulse Web App. Once this happens, you will be able to turn off the “contract performance” credit score in the ERP back-end.

Repo decision algorithm: we have built an algorithm that predicts which defaulters are likelier to recover and which should be repossessed, based on previous behavior. This should help to prioritize repossessions to the customers least likely to recover. We are assessing the business case for this, and if it looks good, would like to do a pilot in Excel, where for some shops, we send a list in Excel prioritized according to the algorithm, to see if it leads to better collections.

Switch on/off: this month we plan to analyze the causes of customers getting stuck in pending enable/disable, to make a list of potential improvements

 

ESF Compatible PULSE @Gilbert Ishimwe (Unlicensed)

 

Mark a customer as opt-out of ESF

What it is: Customers will be able to Opt-Out of ESF when they want to.

Why it’s important: Currently, customers cannot opt-out of ESF in the system, so this will enable NGUs to ‘opt-out' a customer in the system where a customer won’t be required to make any future payments, his CU will be enabled all time and won’t get swaps unless he opt-in again through the linked account.

Note: The customer should opt-out only once they have finished paying all of their appliances and other loans (so only have ESF remaining). The system will technically allow any client to opt out - this will opt out and write off ALL of the products the customer has (including the appliances), so we do not recommend this.

Flexible Depreciation

what is it: It’s a feature that permits to flexibly customize the product depreciation and configure the contract length based on the asset useful life

Why it’s important: This feature allows NGUs

  • To allow optional ESF (e.g. customer can opt-in again with a 1 year CU contract)

  • To align product contract length to asset useful life 

  • To customize asset depreciation based on package contract length, for instance, NGU can sell upgrades over 1year or 3 years 

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After release of P0-805, NGUs will need to request for product configuration for P0-805 (3yr contract in Kenya, 1 yr upgrade in DRC and Rwanda) which might delay when they start to consume the feature

Growing Through Integrations

Canal+ VPN setup ( semi-manual solution)

  • What it is: DRC and Togo will be a able to switch on/off canal+ customers by uploading excel files in canal+ platform

  • Why it’s important: NGUs will be able to sell canal+ satellite services to Bboxx customers. Customers can pay for satellite TV services and NGU will be able to credit customers account in Canal+ platform.

Bboxx USSD application

  • What it is: build a new USSD application that allows Bboxx customers and non-Bboxx customers to have access to Bboxx products and services

  • Why it’s important: customers will have self service option available to them 24/7. For example:

    • Make payments for themselves or pay for other Bboxx customers

    • Customers can access Bboxx account information anytime

    • Signup for upgrades and other Bboxx products or services

    • Non-Bboxx customers can pay for Bboxx customers or see information about Bboxx products

  • Update: USSD development is underway and Kenya will be the first NGU to go live. The USSD application will be available for other NGUs right away. Rolling out USSD to other other NGUs will require two things:

    • Language customization i.e. English, French, Kiswahili, etc

    • USSD gateway integration for that country

 

Safaricom Kenya integration (Dependent on Telco)

  • What it is: establish a direct payment integration with Safaricom

  • Why it’s important: Kenya NGU will be able to rollout paybill and implement pay with account number

Vodacom DRC integration (Dependent on Telco)

  • What it is: add Vodacom M-PESA payments as new payment option for DRC NGU

  • Why it’s important: DRC NGU will be able to accept M-PESA payments from Vodacom and expand to new territories

SunCulture integration

  • What it is: add water pump customers to ERP and be able to switch on/off manually in the SunCulture sentinel system

  • Why it’s important: Togo NGU will be able to sell solar water pumps to non Bboxx customers. Also SunCulture water pumps are going to be the first non Bboxx product that will be sold and managed in pulse which make is first market place product.

  • Update: development has started on Phase 1, which is to allow a customer to sign up without a Bboxx serial number (the key step to allowing a SunCulture sale to be registered in the system). But no clear sense yet how long it will take. Phase 2 will be to integrate the switch on/off, so Bboxx can directly control a SunCulture device. We are starting the design of phase 2 this month

MTN Rwanda integration

Update:

  • Integration is ongoing but there were delays due to slow response from MTN. When MTN team got back to us, resources had been reallocated to work on Safaricom integration

  • MTN integration is expect to resume soon now that we have extra developers from 10pearls

Complete Care & Repair

Project: Set up Repair Centres

  • Done sourcing Repair centre Furniture for Kenya (Kisumu and Ruiru)

  • Done with the first phase of renovating Kisumu repair centre, we expect to receive Furniture by end November.

  • We expect to send the Furniture from China to Kenya next week.

  • No project in my Initiative will be released in the next 30 days

  • UAT the IRT/ERP synchrnization tool by End October

  • Review the failure prediction model with the Data insight team.

  • We expect to set up the Repair centre in Ruiru (2nd repair centre in Kenya) by end November.

With Finlay leaving the company, we haven’t made much progress on projects in the IOT Squad. We are trying to catch up with Will.

Supply Chain Integrated Tool