Talk:How laptop delivery works

People are going to ask: Where is the box labeled OLPC?

1. orders come in from three sources: Credit cards, paypal orders, phone orders; via two companies: Paypal and Patriot.

This is not consistent with the chart, and not relevant to the donor. The donor *placed* his order through one of two forums: web or phone (or were there others?) The donor paid for their order in one of two ways: credit card or PayPal

The fact that some of the orders came to us from PayPal even though the donor paid using a credit card: that's a relevant (and perhaps critical) fact, but how does it fit in to the story from the donor's point of view?

---

The "Patriot" boxes should also be labeled "Greenwood Hall", since that's the name most of the donors missing their XOs have been told the customer service/fullfilment company is operating under.

Questions

> > 1) orders come in from three sources: Credit cards, paypal orders, phone
> > orders; via two companies: Paypal and Patriot

I suspect (please correct if I'm wrong):
Credit Card and PayPal are payment sources. (KQ: yes, good point)
Phone and Web are order sources. (KQ: yes)

Phone orders create credit card payments (KQ: yes)
Web orders create both credit card and paypal payments. (KQ: yes)

Did Paypal take phone orders? (KQ: no)
Did both PayPal and Patriot have separate web-based ordering mechanisms? (KQ: not exactly, 
but separate credit card ordering mechanisms, so a different database)
Were there other ordering methods I'm not aware of? (KQ: That's it)

> > 2) All orders go through some manipulation and get consolidated at the
> > Patriot database. Patriot has the list of orders, shipping/billing
> > addresses, emails (whenever possible).

What manipulation? Manual or automated? Was an audit trail kept? Are
the operations reversible? (KQ: at first all autmomated... when problems came up, 
they had to employ much manual labor. No one OLPC was required or asked to 
monitor that level of detail for any partner.)

What information was kept? What controls were in place to ensure the
critical information was collected? (KQ: If we are looking for blame here... 
we need to start at OLPC. We naively believed we didn't need to monitor the entire 
system or any of the individual company details. We should have... many people 
thought it would be a good idea... there are not enough people at OLPC to do that)
What remedial actions were taken once it was determined that there
were cracks in the system? (KQ: Now, very late in the process, the highest 
level managers of 3 companies have all taken a daily interest and are having daily phone calls.)

> > 3) Then the data goes through a second level of manipulation as they are
> > sent to the Brightstar database.

What information is Brightstar managing? What information are they
*not* managing? Does the information Brightstar does *not* have still
exist in a usable form? Can it be re-married to the database they
have, if that becomes necessary? (KQ: Not sure how to answer this... 
probably because we aren't scrutinizing these databases -- or weren't... 
maybe we will be going forward)

Same questions apply to Patriot.

> > 4) Brightstar gets laptops from our manufacturing partner, Quanta (China).
> >
> > 5) They have to open them, upgrade them, basic test (which includes using
> > the keyboard and mouse and ensuring the correct version is on the laptop),
> > repackage them, print labels from the data, and ship them.

Does this process apply to both Give One and Get One units?  Canadian units? 
(KQ: This applies to all 'Get Ones', which are the only units going through Chicago. 
The recipient children in Ethiopia, or other countries, will be getting their laptops 
direct from China as the shipping costs are very prohibitive to bring them 
into the US first. The upgrading of the laptops is for critical bug fixes that 
occurred after they left mfg facility.)

What is the velocity of this process? How many units per day? (KQ: I believe 
all the laptops in B* have been upgraded at this point, but I need to check. 
I believe they got to about 3000/day when they were at full force. If all the 
laptops are now upgraded, and they just need labels, they can ship quite a bit
 more than that in one day. 

> > 6) If the laptop is returned as unable to deliver or RMA (replacement
> > request) it goes to Brightstar. Brightstart doesn't have email addresses or
> > the ability to send out messages to donor base. Notifications about shipping
> > have to go back to Patriot to get sent out to donors.

Is the bottleneck in Brightstar or Patriot? Is Brightstar shipping
orders at the same rate they're receiving them?  What is that rate? If
that rate is less than Brightstar can handle we need to find out what
the hold-up is in Patriot. (KQ: We all believed the bottleneck would be the upgrading of laptops
at B*, but the problem was data transfers between three companies from the beginning)

Is Patriot involved in manipulating physical material or simply
information processing? Are they constrained by other external
organizations whose names we haven'ty heard yet? (KQ: Patriot does phone 
orders and manages our donor database -- including give many program and 
straight donations)

> > So the second solution was for Brightstar to open a special account with UPS
> > who will deliver to PO Boxes.

(If I originally gave them a PO box address and then changed it to
a non-PO box address when I heard the news,) Which shipping address
should I be expecting to receive my boxes at, and approximately when?
It'd be a shame if I (or someone else) wait patiently until mid July
and then, when I enquire, am told it was delivered to 'the other'
address 3 months ago and my opportunity to dispute the failed delivery
has long since passed.  (KQ: If the address change is made with Patriot donor
services -- not olpc support group; and they accept the change, then it will happen. 
They are still in control of the PO Box data. This may change any minute... so I 
wouldn't continue to encourage people to change their PO Box data any more).

> > Let them know that donor services has to handle them.

Is that Brightstar Donor Services or Patriot Donor Services? (KQ: Patriot runs 'donor services')  

GraphViz

Note:

 Instead of a picture, could also be done with Wiki plugin, GraphViz.

--iainD 17:55, 18 January 2008 (EST)

---

Phone Numbers for Entities

It would be nice if phone numbers were added for each of the entities.