Would Clarify Bootcamps be useful?
One of the themes I’ve picked up on recently is that there seems to be a lot of organizations who still use Clarify /Amdocs, but not to its full potential. No where near its full potential. I’ve recently talked to a bunch of people who don’t really know how to use it fully, extend it, what functionality is available, or even how to maintain it.
I’ve seen the same issue on both sides of the house:
- Technical IT resources who don’t know how to customize it, what all of the moving components are, what to do when something goes wrong, or even where to look for knowledge,
- Business resources who don’t fully know what the product is capable or what exactly they even have.
For example, I’m amazed when I find out that people aren’t running Rulemanager – one of the more powerful pieces of the system. Or they don’t know how to add new business rule properties. Or they don’t know that incoming email can flow into cases. Or that there are search capabilities that make finding information super easy. Or that auto-destination rules can assist in routing workflow items to the correct queue. Or that contracts can be used for SLA tracking. Etc.
How does this happen?
Well, people move to new positions. Companies get re-organized. Software and documentation gets lost. Things stop working, and no one knows who to call, so it stays not working. In addition, systems like Clarify are large and full of deep functionality, so it’s hard to know everything that the system can do.
This got me thinking: would it be useful to offer Clarify bootcamps?
There could be bootcamps for business folks, such as those that are responsible for using the system. This might include end users, call center managers, even Directors and VPs of Support.
There could also be bootcamps for technical people, for those that need to maintain, customize, setup and configure the system. These might be IT people, developers, as well as system administrators.
How could bootcamps be delivered?
I think there’s a few options here. We could do bootcamps at a customer location, so that the content is specific to that customer. We could do bootcamps at our facility, where multiple attendees travel to a central location. Or we could do virtual bootcamps, through webinars. These could be longer running, such as a full day, or they could be just an hour. As an example, there could be a weekly one-hour web session, and the entire bootcamp might last 10 weeks.
What do you think?
At this point, I’m just trying to gauge interest. So what do you think? Is there interest? Would you attend? What are your thoughts on delivery? Would you prefer to attend a week-long session somewhere, or simply do one hour a week over many weeks? Have any ideas for particular topics you think would be useful?
Leave a comment here, or drop me at email at gary [at] dovetailsoftware [dot] com
