Lech Janczewski
Associate Professor Lech Janczewski (Department of Information Systems and Operations Management) has over 50 years’ experience in information technology. He is the convenor of Infosys 345: the Business Project, a unique undergraduate course that matches student teams who need real world experience with sponsoring companies who need IT expertise.
Holistic Data Visualisation project achieves international success
This project was undertaken by a group of Infosys 345 students, working for global IT company HansenCX. This company began life as Peace Software, set up in 1986 by Master of Commerce graduate Brian Peace. Peace Software became a world pioneer in developing software for utility companies, and now, as HansenCX, it develops, implements and supports proprietary customer care and billing solutions for energy and water providers worldwide.
HansenCX has over 500 utility clients in 50 countries, servicing around 100 million end customers. The head office is in Melbourne, with branch offices in New Zealand, USA, Brazil, Argentina, China, Vietnam, Denmark, Finland and England.
Until 2018, HansenCX was using an ‘out-of-the-box’ customer information system (CIS) that they had inherited from Peace Software. A client using this system would typically be faced with millions, perhaps billions, of rows of data for entities such as customers, sites, meters, products, invoices etc.
So the challenge that HansenCX posed to the Infosys 345 student team was to develop a user-friendly system that could provide a holistic view of relations existing between providers of utility services and their customers.
The student team designed an easily navigable interface with great graphical support, which is fully integrated with the company’s existing PeacePlus CIS. It is also a truly international product, because users can change the language with a ‘flick of the finger’.
The system was extensively tested on an international gathering of utility providers, was readily accepted with minimal modification, and is currently in the implementation phase in many of the countries listed above.