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Home Nov Monthly Implementation Planner

Key Initiative

What’s was released last month?

What is planned for release over the next month? (Nov)

General Updates on Key Projects

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

Key Initiative

What’s was released last month?

What is planned for release over the next month? (Nov)

General Updates on Key Projects

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

bP20

bP20 preliminary pilot report for 10 customers who have been using the units for more than two weeks

bPower20 pilot result

New light connectors rolled out concurrently with bP20’s

 

~20th Nov - bP20 pilot report made available to all NGUs, based on first 50 customers who will have used the units for more than two weeks

26th Nov - DRC bP20 Stock arrives, followed by rollout

29th - Rwanda bP20 Stock arrives, followed by rollout

 

 

bP300

N/A

Sales in Orange DRC:

The team in DRC received 100 units and have been trained on the product. Sales and installations will start in November.

 

Market Testing in Kenya:

Kenya team is working on a market testing strategy and they should start it in November

Battery work ongoing

The development on battery that will be used for replacements is ongoing and should be done by November

 

bP50

Overvoltage Alert:

All the different teams in overvoltage alert operationalization in Rwanda have been trained. The alert was released on October 19 but we found a bug. The alert is not appearing as an action on the CSCC module. The ERP team is working on solving this.

Tiger 12 PCBA testing:

What it is: This is a new PCBA revision for the bPower50 .

Why it is important

The PCBA has better protection on its inputs and outputs and will reduce risk of thermal events caused by overvoltage on our legacy PCBA revisions. Tiger 12 is also needed for use of lithium batteries on bP50.

Radio V5

Gathered feedback from customers, sales agents and repair technician and shared it with the sourcing and quality team for improvement before we move into trial order production

Water filter testing

We will test the water filter prototype developed by the Stanford team in Rwanda. We will get customers feedback on the filter and make a decision on moving on with development

32 TVs

Production of trial order have completed
30 TVs on way to DRC for pilot

3 samples on way to Kenya

3 Samples on way to Ivory Coast

Subwoofer

Open for NGUs order

Interested NGUs can get 2 samples

 

Dimmable light

Dimmable development is on going and on track.

 

Struggling to push overvoltage alert bug fix up the priority list

Parabolic Antennas

Samples delayed due to clearance events which is out of Bboxx control. The samples have been in clearance in Kinshasa for 1 month and 2 weeks.

Next Generation Pulse

 

 

Began development on sales process

Started development work on the process for selling upfront sales in the new system

Began design of product config

Began working on a simpler way to configure products yourselves in the new system.

WE NEED YOUR INPUT! Please expect invites from us to provide input into how the new system should work

 

Managing Field Staff

Add comments in Pulse (PA-524)

What it is: It’s the feature that allows a Pulse User to add a comment in the customer detail page and all the added comments will be visible to any other user who checks on that customer’s detail page.

Why it’s important:

  • This keeps the records of the past conversation (situation) with the customer

  • It helps the user to know if the current situation is new or happened before

Create technical issues from the Customer Detail Page (PO-1037)

What it is: It’s the new button that the user can see when he opens the customer’s details, that is used to record a technical issue for the selected customer without leaving the customer’s detail page.

Why it’s important:

  • It will save Shop Managers time because they won’t need to leave the customer page again and go to create a technical issue for the same customer elsewhere, especially when they still need to do something on the same customer page.

Scroll bar for linked accounts (PA-909)

What it is: It’s the ability to click on the collapsible button in front of the account (customer) ID and see the dropdown list of the linked accounts which is scrollable.

Why it’s important: the list doesn’t occupying the whole height of the customer details, only 6 customer IDs are listed and the user needs to scroll down to view others.

 

Automatic shop selection based on the customer installation address (in Pulse) (PO-1062)

What it is: During the lead creation through Pulse, the shop will be selected automatically based on the entered installation address

Why it’s important:

The lead creator will not:

  • need to know which shop is covering the customer’s address

  • select the shop that is far from the customer address

Note: User creating the customer will still be able to change the shop manually if they want to.

Log of coordinates change in ERP’s application customer view (PO-1005)

What it is: it’s the log that will be shown in ERP’s application customer view to keep the records of the changes made on the customer coordinates.

Why it’s important: Because it will show who made the change and the previous value before the change, it will help the user:

  • to fix the mistakes by reverting to the old coordinates (values)

  • to know who did that change, so that he may provide the explanation of the change

Create customer in Pulse

What it is: we’ve already released this feature. However, there’s an issue where creating the customer doesn’t change customer to “pay DP status”. We’re fixing this, which will allow the feature to be used

Why it’s important: allow Shop Managers to create customers, saving time and cost at the Call Centre. Also, get the Call Centre to start using this instead of ERP, so they get used to the Pulse interface as we phase out the ERP.

Rebuild Agent App with New format

  • What it is: recreating the Agent App to use the Customer API and active user directory, which will make the agent app more sustainable, allow it to connect with Next Gen Pulse, and lay the foundation for eventual merger of Technician and Agent App into one Field App

  • Ability for a sales agent to login using Pulse credentials (PO-1049), this is ready for release but it won’t go public now because there are some other works required before it’s usable

  • The developer is currently working on the Home page of the new app (PO-1051)

Front Line Users out of ERP

  • What it is: This will re-create call centre functionality in Pulse

  • We have finalized the draft of the design document, it will soon be reviewed and if approved, we can create Jira stories for this project.

Territory Planning Tool

  • The excel template design is completed but we are still waiting for the data we requested in REG Rwanda.

REG Rwanda provided insufficient data (info), Rwanda NGU is still following up to get the right data.

Fighting Fraud & Enforcing Payment

Credit check for upgrades, Phase 1:

  • What it is: agent app will use a “machine learning” predictive model to determine which customers qualify for upgrade or not. The current model gives a binary determination of a customer’s upgrade eligibility. Future versions will be refined to produce a determination of the AMOUNT of credit a customer is eligible for.

  • 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

  • UPDATE: The new app with the upgrades model has already been rolled out to all sales agents in Kenya.

  • How to get it:

    • Implementation Pack

    • The model currently is trained on Rwanda and Kenya. If you would like it in your market, talk to us, and we can retrain the model for you.

 

 

Free Stock Assignment:

  • What it is: This project will allow you to assign stock to a technician without linking it to a customer, to enable “same day installations.”

  • Development has started, so progress is ongoing. The first story is in UAT. Next will be to develop inventory updates and track stock losses for stock with technicians

Switch on/off improvements:

Custom lists in Power BI: Soon, NGUs will be able to create custom lists (based on fields that they can add/remove from an existing list) and export the list outside PBI in csv/Excel. This will enable NGUs to get more information on customers they would like to follow up with so they can take necessary actions (e.g. following up with DP only Defaulters) to improve their portfolio quality.

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.

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

 

ESF Compatible PULSE

Flexible Depreciation (P0-805)

what is it: flexibly customize the product depreciation and configure the contract length based on the asset useful life. Previously all appliances were depreciated over 3 years, and all ESF over 10 years. Now, depreciation period will equal the contract length.

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

How to get it:

Flexible Depreciation Implementation pack

Mark a customer as opt-out of ESF (PO-541)

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.

Update: we’re currently UATing this with Accounting and DRC.

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.

ESF customers monitoring

Update:

 

 

Growing Through Integrations

 

SunCulture - Phase 1 (Manual switch on/off)

  • 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 it first market place product.

  • Update: Development for phase 1 has already started and we’ve already completed UAT for the first development story.

Sell a Service at Sign-Up

  • What it is: currently services (i.e. Canal+ subscription) can only be sold as upgrades. This allows it to be sold at sign up

  • Why it’s important: Will allow proper configuration of Canal+

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: Bboxx USSD application is in UAT for information access only. Payments will not be available immediately because we are still working on design document for how payments will be done through payments services.

SunCulture - Phase 2 (Integration to automate switch on/off)

  • What it is: Automatic switch on/off for customers with SunCulture water pumps. Follow up from phase 1 to enable Togo to scale water pump sales.

  • 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: Stories have already been written and in Pulse Automation squad backlog. Development work is expected to commence soon.

Manual Downgrades and Upgrades between Solar Systems

  • What it is: a process for downgrading a customer by recording a repossession, re-installing the non-downgraded products, recording a fake payment for the DP and previous payments made, and manually removing the ontime.

  • Why it’s important: allows Canal+ and other services/products to be sold, without the risk of customers being trapped into pay plans they can’t afford.

  • Update: A bit of development is needed. First to allow removing of payment time. Then to update reports to account for the fake payment and fake repossession.

Subsidy Payments Reporting Data Collection

  • What is it? processes and templates on how to NGUs (Rwanda and Togo) will be collecting daily subsidy payments and format them in a way data insights can import them into data warehouse

  • Why it’s important: Allow NGUs and Capital division to have reliable subsidy dashboards

SMS provider for TOGO, PAS Nigeria, and DRC Goma

  • What is it? above mentioned NGUs will start paying for their own sms messages used.

  • Why it’s important: Currently PAS Nigeria, DRC Goma, and Togo are not paying for their sms messages. The cost is included in the pulse fees.

SunCulture Phase 1 - subsidy issue

This is progressing, but one potential issue is that the telco in Togo bases subsidy amount on a formula for SHS that is different than the one for water pumps, so will be sending the wrong subsidy amount. Togo needs to work with the telco to update their formula for water pumps

MTN Rwanda Payments Integration

MTN is moving their servers to a new environment and put all integrations on hold. They were supposed to have finished this in mid-Oct, but still not done

Safaricom Kenya Payments Integration

The issue is on Safaricom end. They commissioned a test environment and but we got a callback problem. For some reason Safaricom can't reach our servers. They get a service is temporary unavailable error. Last week Talha, Fred, Safaricom team had a session and Safaricom developer disconnected from Safaricom VPN then he was able to reach Bboxx servers. We concluded that the issue is in their servers and they should look into.

Complete Care & Repair

  • Shipped the repair centre Furniture to Rwanda and Kenya.

  • Complete Renovation in Ruiru repair centre

  • UAT the IRT/ERP synchronization tool in Rwanda repair centre

  • UAT the IRT/ERP synchronization tool: we are waiting for the ERP test instance. We expect to have it byNov 5, 2020

  • The Data insight squad has started to develop the control units failure rate dashboard.

  • Kenya RC’s 70-80% complete

  • Lack of enough resources in the IoT squad.

  • We are not able to set up the RC in Senegal due to lack of RC furniture, repair technicians and laptops. We have pushed the NGU for the past 3 months but in vain.

Supply Chain Integrated Tool