UgaBYTES Conducts Management Training for 12 telecentres

Country: Uganda
Created By: Sarah on 19-Oct-2007 12:00 AM

17th October: UgaBYTES held a management training workshop at Buganda telecentre. Over 30 participants from 12 telecentres attended the training. The telecentre managers from the districts of Kampala, Wakiso, Mukono and Mpigi attended the lively and rich sessions. The workshop handled four topic issues that is;
customer care- the dos and don’ts of good customer care; how to make a customer come back for telecentre services tomorrow
Financial management- the relevant books of accounts that should be used by telecentres and how to be creative in everything they do so as to minimize their expenses,
Environment management- using the stakeholder analysis tool; to identify who the primary and secondary stakeholders are and managing risks involved in telecentres; that involved identifying telecentre risks and developing strategies to deal with each risk.Some of the key issues, experiences and lessons of each of the session have been outlined below;Session 1: Customer Care; among the key issues, experiences and lessons learnt were:
o Understanding who a customer is
o Importance of good customer care practice to a telecentre
o Using language and body communication skills when talking to customers
o Marketing their telecentres through customer satisfaction

Participants observed that they never practiced what they actually knew about customer care. What they actually understood was that, customers should not be involved in their private problems, but only they should strive to always give customers what they wanted on time; dissatisfied customers cannot come back for services tomorrow. Noted also was, personal relationships should always be out of service delivery.Session 2: Financial management; key issues, experiences and lessons learnt:
o The financial books of accounts used by telecentres
o Importance of keeping financial records
o Creativity when utilizing resources so as to minimize expenses
Majority of the participants observed they never even knew the importance of the identified books of accounts; how relevant they were to telecentres, an indication that none of the books was even used in their telecentre. This has called for further capacity building in financial management; to have a hand on exercise of how to do it.

Session 3: Environment management; key issues, experience and lessons learnt:

o Participants identified telecentre stakeholders
o They learnt how to categorize among the stakeholders the primary and secondary
o Importance of involving stakeholders in decision making process

It was observed that participants could not identify who their primary and secondary stakeholders were; by attaching the level of influence and power they had in telecentres. It raised a debate deciding who has influence, power or none of the two to the telecentre and the roles stakeholders play to determine who is a primary and secondary stakeholder. It has been observed that, further trainings in the use of stakeholder analysis tool is still called for and for participants to know the strategies they need to choose from so as to manage each category of stakeholder. Their failure to identify who the stakeholders are, has largely contributed to many problems faced by telecentres.

Session 4: Risk management; key issues, experiences and lessons learnt:

o Participants identified risks involved in telecentres
o How to assess risks identified using the impact/probability matrix
o Ranking risks to determine what response would be
o And laying strategies of responding to each risk 

It was observed that participants knew all risks involved in telecentres, but they actually never knew how to respond to them. They learnt the procedure of assessing risks, ranking and laying strategies for risk response. It was observed that the responses they knew were not planned at all; were just taken responses without thinking through whether they could manage the risks or not. Many of them their risk acceptance was not planned at all.

The workshop was facilitated by UgaBYTES staff; Esther Nasikye, Pamela Ogwal, Mariam Nalunkuuma and Sarah Nalwoga. The workshop is part of the online helpdesk project, funded by telecentre.org a collaborative initiative of IDRC, Microsoft and SDC. The workshop employed open facilitation methods to allow participants learn from their earlier day-to-day telecentre activities. Many training sessions will be organized in other regions using a cluster format of selecting nearby districts, to ease movement of participants. Some of the additional training topics identified by participants include; presentation skills, proposal writing and lobbying skills.


The workshop ended successfully, involving a lot of information and experience sharing amongst participants. Observed was that all the discussed issues were practically done by the practitioners, though we just shaped together whatever they had. The style of presentation was fully involving; having discussions and plenary on every topic presented, which opened a mental discussion of all participants. This one day training shall also to be extended to the rest of the districts.

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