Total Computer Group Services for Total Enforcement – Project Management,
Training, Data Conversion/Data Migration, and Support
Total Enforcement services include the gamut of implementation-related
tasks—project management, training, data conversion and migration, and
software support. Total Enforcement’s approach to each of these tasks
is based on a combination of industry experience, expertise, and knowledge.
The quality of all these services is high, and becomes better every time we
perform them, because our managers, trainers, developers, and engineers value
the lessons learned in each challenge and bring their cumulative experience
to bear for each new project.
Project Management
During its 20-year lifetime, Total Computer Group has consistently reviewed
and refined its project management philosophy and process. Addressing the
traditional project management precepts of scope, time, and cost, the company
has developed techniques and tools to ensure that we complete all of our projects
according to an agreed upon scope of work, on time, and within budget.
Each of these project management precepts – scope, time, and cost—cannot
be changed without impacting the others and when the three successfully merge
for a project, they produce a fourth consideration – quality.
These three constraints are often competing constraints: increased scope
typically means increased time and increased cost, a tight time constraint
could mean increased costs and reduced scope, and a tight budget could mean
increased time and reduced scope.
The discipline of project management is about providing the tools and techniques that
enable the project team (not just the project manager) to organize their work to meet
project requirements. Total Computer Group recognizes that the success of a project
depends greatly on the completeness and correctness of the work done in
the project’s early stages. Errors and omissions early on can grow into significant schedule
and cost impacts. Therefore, it is imperative that we institute a structured development approach
right from the start, one that Total Computer Group and its customer and subcontractors have helped
draw up and agreed to.
Strong leadership, communication, schedule monitoring and risk management are other keys to project success.
Clear lines of communication and responsibility provide all project stakeholders with a path toward the
successful completion of the project. The ability to recognize and resolve issues long before they become
problems is paramount to achieving project success.
Training
One of the most important aspects of a project rollout is user acceptance of the new system. To ensure that users are able to operate the system right from the start, and that they are able to see the direct benefits to them almost immediately requires a superior training program that can be conducted with minimal disruption to an agency’s ongoing business.
Total Enforcement training does just that. The company’s subject matter experts have designed and delivered Total Enforcement training and have continually improved both content and presentation based on user participant input and industry-accepted standards. Our trainers are experienced in public safety/law enforcement, software development, and quality assurance. They know the way agencies operate and how the software should help make officers safer and more efficient.
During the project planning phase of a project, Total Computer Group’s Training Manager works closely with the agency to identify specific training agenda items as well as who is to be trained. The result is a comprehensive training plan that will include:
- Rationale for training and specific job to be trained
- The tasks required to perform the job being trained
- The objectives and supporting knowledge, skills, and abilities for each task
- Location and dates of the training
The assessment will also result in a detailed training agenda and a list of required attendees, whether it is train-the-trainer or all user training.
Prior to project implementation, we present training for each group scheduled to attend. During these sessions, trainers demonstrate the features and functions of each module that the specific group will use. We encourage users to use their laptops during training sessions giving them a hands-on opportunity to better learn the software’s functionality.
Total Computer Group also provides additional training support at an agency’s offices during the first week the application is in production The agency can have our trainer assist with real time activity, or use a separate training database, which is a copy their production data.
At the completion of training, Total Computer Group asks attendees to complete training evaluations so that our training process can be continually improved and targeted to user needs and concerns.
Data Conversion and Migration
Data conversion is an important and complex aspect of a records management installation. If not conducted carefully, it can be an error-prone process as well. To conduct a data conversion without losing precious information, the project team must ensure that target formats support the same features and data formats as the source file or source information if it is not electronic.
Techniques such as approximation can mitigate loss of information when data formats in the source and target files differ. Careful consideration of such options must be made to ensure that operations such as searching and copying are not impaired by the difference in characters. Successful data conversion requires thorough knowledge of the workings of both source and target formats. When a format’s specification is unknown, the project team may need to conduct reverse engineering to carry out conversion. Reverse engineering can achieve close approximation of the original specifications, but errors and missing features can still result. Total Computer Group’s data conversion engineers can help an agency avoid typical conversion pitfalls using Total’s well-thought out methodologies and proven expertise.
Data migration is the transferring of data between storage types, formats, or computer systems and is required when an agency changes from one automated records system to another. Total Computer Group usually performs a data migration programmatically to achieve an automated migration, freeing up an agency’s personnel from tedious, sometimes error-prone tasks. To achieve an effective data migration, Total Computer Group’s data conversion engineers map data on the old system to the new system providing a design for data extraction and data loading.
To date, Total Computer Group has migrated nearly 40 million records. We believe that a successful data conversion, along with Total Enforcement’s extensive search capabilities, brings a broad new level of intelligence to an agency.
In most cases, we perform data conversion without the help of the prior vendor. Total accesses the data in its entirety on the source platform (the old system) to examine the data’s structure and assess what will be required in the migration. As part of the migration, we normalize the data, making it much more useful and searchable in the new format. This is especially important because our experience has shown that legacy vendor support usually is not provided. This is also why we urge our customers to avoid highly proprietary platforms, because they lack the flexibility of more open systems. These proprietary systems can make it difficult or impossible to integrate newer third party solutions into legacy systems, forcing an agency to be limited in its future choices for state of the art software and other tools.
Support
Today’s public safety agencies engage in mission-critical activities that require instant access to information and tools. As a result, those agencies are demanding better service and shorter response times. Total Computer Group’s professional service organization effectively manages and delivers promised services, promoting customer satisfaction and operability. At Total Computer Group, we use a comprehensive service management solution that enables our organization to monitor and improve customer satisfaction.
Total Computer Group offers several support options for today’s progressive law enforcement agencies. In all cases, our experienced team will handle all software and/or system related issues during the implementation, warranty period, and throughout all subsequent maintenance contracts. We base our reputation on meeting our customers’ expectations, and our success depends on that.
At the foundation of our program is our ConnectWise comprehensive support management software solution that enables us to effectively deliver the services our customers have come to expect. This tool enables Total Computer Group’s service agency to share knowledge and best practices throughout the company, improving our operational efficiency while gaining insight into key management metrics. Service personnel have instant access to the information they need to solve issues quickly, increasing your agency’s productivity (and our own).
As a fundamental component of Total Computer Group’s support program, ConnectWise, our client portal, provides authorized customer representatives with web-based access to internet accessible services. Customers use ConnectWise to report technical issues and service requests (SR’s) encountered in their Total Computer Group supported systems.
This provides agencies with a simple means of reporting and tracking their issues, and allows them access to real-time information on their software requests. When agency representatives enter a new SR, they can request specific resources, assign priorities to their agency’s requests, and track issues to their resolution.
With our client portal, customers can enter service requests 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.