A GIS-based approach to breakdown the TeleDensity indicator and estimate the occupied fixed lines at different administrative levels: A case study in Alexandria Governorate, Egypt

TeleDensity is a very important tool to show the trend of economic development at the country level. There is a big gap in the value of TeleDensity between the Least Developed Countries and developed countries. In general, TeleDensity is usually measured at the National level. The calculated TeleDensity value of Egypt in 2010 is more than the world average value and less than the average value of Europe. This study aims at introducing a new approach to breakdown TeleDensity from the National to Sector level, and estimates the occupied fixed lines (OFL) at both Sector and Shiyakha levels. Alexandria Governorate that is located at the northern coast of Egypt was selected as a case study in this research. Detailed analysis was applied at the Shiyakha level inside the El-Montazah sector. The proposed GIS-based approach is used to project the Exchanges and their spatial coverage extent at the Shiyakha level. TeleDensity was calculated at the Governorate and Sector levels. The resultant TeleDensity was used to estimate the OFL at the Sector and Shiyakha levels. The results indicated that the TeleDensity of Alexandria Governorate (24.1%) is considered among the highest values, whereas El-Fayoum Governorate is considered as having the lowest TeleDensity value in Egypt. In general, the lowest TeleDensity values were observed at the Governorates of Upper Egypt. It is noticed that the highest OFL values were concentrated on the northern sectors of the Alexandria Governorate study area. It is concluded that the GIS plays an important role in visualizing and analyzing the telecom infrastructure

Information systems performance evaluation, introducing a two-level technique: Case study call centers

With the emergence of Information and Communication technologies, and the relatively cheap cost of calls (voice and data), the use of call centers to provide new services to citizens has grown extensively. Evolution in call centers technologies, systems and infrastructures allowed the transformation of industries and services in big enterprises and organizations, customer support services, marketing services and after sales support are examples of such transformations. The objective of this paper was to introduce a new technique that can support decision makers in the call centers industry to evaluate, and analyze the performance of call centers. The technique presented is derived from the research done on measuring the success or failure of information systems. Two models are mainly adopted namely: the Delone and Mclean model first introduced in 1992 and the Design Reality Gap model introduced by Heeks in 2002. Two indices are defined to calculate the performance of the call center; the success index and the Gap Index. An evaluation tool has been developed to allow call centers managers to evaluate the performance of their call centers in a systematic analytical approach; the tool was applied on 4 call centers from different areas, simple applications such as food ordering, marketing, and sales, technical support systems, to more real time services such as the example of emergency control systems. Results showed the importance of using information systems models to evaluate complex systems as call centers. The models used allow identifying the dimensions for the call centers that are facing challenges, together with an identification of the individual indicators in these dimensions that are causing the poor performance of the call center

Assessing call centers’ success:

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is becoming one of the most growing industries in 21st Century and a significant workforce in the global economy. Revolution in telecommunications, free trade agreements, and cultural behavior in a number of developing countries paved the way for the growth of BPO industry. Technology based BPO services are those services provided by Call centers, services that vary from receiving simple phone calls, to marketing services, sales services, and up to remote diagnosis and technical support services. This paper introduces a model to evaluate the performance of call centers based on the Delone and McLean Information Systems success model. A number of indicators are identified to track the call center’s performance. Mapping of the proposed indicators to the six dimensions of the D&M model is presented. A Weighted Call Center Performance Index is proposed to assess the call center performance; the index is used to analyze the effect of the identified indicators. Policy-Weighted approach was used to assume the weights with an analysis of different weights for each dimension. The analysis of the different weights cases gave priority to the User satisfaction and net Benefits dimension as the two outcomes from the system. For the input dimensions, higher priority was given to the system quality and the service quality dimension. Call centers decision makers can use the tool to tune the different weights in order to reach the objectives set by the organization. Multiple linear regression analysis was used in order to provide a linear formula for the User Satisfaction dimension and the Net Benefits dimension in order to be able to forecast the values for these two dimensions as function of the other dimension