EGG Retreat 2010

Last week, Jamie, Micah, Laurent and I went on a 5-day “retreat” to Chanika, the village where our charging station is located.  The purpose of the trip was to observe and assess EGG’s day-to-day operations, as well as to implement three major changes to the business.  This post highlights these changes.

1. Launching EGG Franchises in Mvuti, Mbande, Bwama and Msanga

As explained in a previous post (“Can We Franchise EGG Services?”), we have decided to franchise the transportation and distribution of EGG’s batteries to store owners near certain customer populations.  Over the last few weeks, we interviewed and selected four franchisees, determined the fee that customers should pay to swap batteries at their stores and developed an operations manual to train the franchisees on various processes.  During EGG Retreat 2010, our team visited the stores to sign contracts with the franchisees and launch the sites.  The franchisees in Bwama and Msanga arranged large gatherings of current and potential EGG customers on the day that we visited their sites.  During these meetings, Yohana and Hussein made presentations about EGG’s service and announced to customers that they can now swap their batteries at a nearby storefront, instead of having to travel to our charging station in Chanika (or arrange for a neighbor or friend to make the trip on their behalf) as before.  The above picture captures the gathering in Msanga.

2. Improving Forms and Recordkeeping Processes

As EGG has expanded, we have begun to realize that some of our forms and ways of recording data can be improved.  We made several such improvements during the retreat.  For example, previously, we had separate sheets to record different types of battery movements to and from our charging station in Chanika.  We had a sheet to record customer swaps, a sheet to record the batteries that our electricians use for new installations and a sheet to record large transfers of batteries between our charging station and newly-launched franchises.  Last week, we designed a single form to track all of these types of movements.  This will help us more easily track the number of batteries at our charging station at any given point in time.

3. Implementing an IT System to Track Customer and Battery Information

Finally, during the retreat, Laurent began implementing an Access database to better track customer and battery information.  This system will be fed with the written records taken by our sales team and at the charging station and newly-launched franchises.  It will significantly improve our future operations.  For example, it will help us correct human errors, such as a franchisee recording a battery number incorrectly or accidentally giving a battery to a customer with an expired subscription.  In addition, it will  notify us if a particular battery has not been swapped in a certain period of time.  It will allow us to see who most recently had the battery, so we can inquire about its status and get compensated for any lost batteries.

There is a lot of work left to be done to finish implementing these changes, but the retreat definitely gave us a head start.  We hope to make such retreats a monthly or bi-monthly tradition, so look out for blog posts on EGG Retreat 2010 – Part 2!