ManageEngine announced a managed services edition of their help desk software – ServiceDesk Plus. The new release is a complete web-based integrated package, including incident and service request management, self-service portal, knowledge base, IT asset management, even purchase and contract management. The new software is available in either a Standard Edition, providing the full range of basic help desk management functions, with a knowledge base and self service portal; or Professional Edition, which includes all the features found in the Standard Edition plus complete asset management.

Managed services allow organizations outsource the regular tasks like IT/network/help desk management to third party service providers. This helps those organizations focus on their core business and keep costs low because someone else is taking care of those problems. With the right service levels, managed services can help reduce the ticket resolution times and bring expertise to the table, something which the regular organization does not have to invest in. The service provider, of course, gets the advantage to  share his expertise and costs among multiple accounts getting better ROI.

The new offering from ManageEngine gives the service provider the software to manage the help desk services of multiple accounts. It covers basic ticket management with service levels, knowledge base, self-service portal, asset management. Interestingly, the new edition derives from one of their flagship products that comes ready with ITIL modules like incident, problem and change management. But it looks like the new MSP edition will not have the ITIL modules built into it for now.

A simple Google search will tell you there are many companies who provide such services to their clients. One of them has been quoted in the official ManageEngine press release – “As a Managed Service Provider who has been in the IT helpdesk industry for over 18 years and used a number of different helpdesk applications to support over a hundred customers, we believe that we have finally found a solution that fulfills our requirements,” said Jason Roberts, Technical Manager for TCNS, an IT and Network Support provider. “ManageEngine allows our customers to be kept up-to-date on a three-tier level – telephone, web and email – provides excellent SLA options based on individual customers, allows our technical staff to be kept updated instantly on all requests, and most of all, provides an easy-to-use reporting facility, which can be pre-scheduled, giving me the time to concentrate on other business requirements! It has all the features an MSP needs at a very affordable price. Now I can focus on my customers without worrying about the software, features or prices.”

The economy, rising prices and how-do-you-keep-your-costs-low-question are helping managed services. Companies like ManageEngine make that process easier. What do you think? Do you think managed services in the help desk market will help? Have you thought of going the managed services route or are you already in the path? Let us know. We would love to hear your views.

Spiceworks, the Austin-based free IT management software vendor, is making strides with the release of a new version of its software. The new version – the 17th release from the company – comes with support for larger networks (upt0 1000 computers). To put this in perspective, the previous version supported networks with fewer than 500 computers. Other key feature additions in this version include real-time SQL Server monitoring, enhanced scan scheduling, editable network maps, help desk queues and SSL support.

For the uninitiated, Spiceworks offers free IT management software that lets you monitor your network, manage IT assets and run a help desk. The company claims to have over 830,000 business users in 196 countries worldwide. The software can also be run in MSP mode for service providers who provide network management and help desk services for their clients. How do they keep it free? They run ads inside the user interface.

Some of the features they announced in this release includes:

• Real-Time SQL Server Monitoring – provides real-time monitoring of key SQL Server performance metrics, including transaction load, I/O throughput and disk space consumption.
• Dynamic Scan Control – gives users more flexibility and control over how their networks are scanned, including allowing individual and customized scans by device, subnet and department. Better support for remote locations is also included.
• SSL Support – offers full SSL encryption to provide greater security within organizations and for MSPs and businesses using the software to remotely manage multiple offices and locations.
• Customizable Network Maps – provides the ability to create and view multiple network maps, edit existing network elements and add new elements, change the layout and organization of the elements, and add annotations.
• Help Desk Routing and Queuing – allows users to group and work help desk tickets based on the content or source in the ticket – such as “all printer problems” or “tickets from the marketing organization.” Rules can be based on any data attribute in the system, including title, summary, source, severity, employee, or user defined attributes.

Spiceworks also reached out to its community to add support for multiple languages in the software – 10 languages to be exact including German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Danish and Croatian. The Spiceworks community continues to add more languages to the software.

Spiceworks also told me that most Spiceworks users are located here in the USA but they also have users in parts of Europe, Australia, India, Brazil etc.

Spiceworks has an interesting business model when it comes to IT management software and there are a lot of eyes on it to see how it performs. More details on the release here.

In our ITSM Consulting Practice, we regularly work with customers on the implementation of service desk tools.  One of the common misconceived requests we receive is…  “Can you implement the ITIL (name one) process in our service desk tool?”   What follows is that we need to educate the customer that you can’t implement a process in a tool; we can only implement a workflow, and documentation.  The process is larger than that.

Last week, we saw “Bridging the Gap – Part 1: Process and the Service Desk“. This is part 2 of the three part series discussing how to “Bridge the Gap” between Service Desks, IT Processes, and Workflow.  Part 2 describes the role of defining workflow for the Service Desk, and the other “actors” in the service management processes.

Workflow is how we document and automate the day-to-day activities and decision points to achieve the aims of a process.  One way to view it is, that the goal of a process is to achieve specific set of outputs for the process stakeholders, while the goal of workflow is to ensure a set of activities, that may span multiple processes are executed in a specific order.

An illustrative example is in the relationship between Change Management and Release Management.    Change Management is responsible for approving the work to implement a change, and Release Management is responsible for approving a release into production.  These are separate processes, but in practice, they are frequently implemented in a common workflow.   This is part of where the confusion frequently originates, as the workflow in our tools associated with both of these processes is frequently associated with “Change Tickets”.

Structured workflow design has the benefit of developing consistent, repeatable steps for approaching the activities associated with any process.  This is particularly helpful in a process like Incident Management, where the Level 1 personnel may not have deep technical understanding of the services in the organization, but can rely on a well defined workflow to guide them in solving the issue.

ITIL identifies a set of activities to accomplish processes in the form of a RACI Matrix, which stands for:

Responsible – A person or role that performs the activity
Accountable – The one and only one person that ensures the activity occurs
Consulted – A person or role that gives advice for an activity
Informed – A person or role who is given information about an activity, but has no other role

Each process should define all the activities to accomplish it, and the roles that will perform those activities.  This becomes a guide to workflow, but again, is not itself the workflow…  For this we can take the example of incident management.  The standard activities at the beginning of the incident management process are… Incident Identification, Incident Logging, Incident Categorization, Incident Prioritization.  These are the process activities, the workflow associated with this might be Log Incident, Assign to Level 1, and Accept Level 1 Assignment with the underlying work instructions for the Level 1 Staff ensuring that the appropriate process activities are performed.

Put another way, workflow identifies the business steps being taken by personnel acting in a process.  The process defines activities, and the workflow must ensure (usually through work instructions) that all activities are performed by the appropriate roles.

In summary, the workflow puts the activities associated with one or more processes into the context of the business in which it occurs.  The workflow for incident management at a large bank will be much different than that for a small internet hosting company, but the underlying activities to resolve the incident will be very similar, with a very different RACI matrix associated.

Part 3 of this series will give a practical example of how to bridge process, workflow, and the tools we use to automate the processes.   We will describe a common case of the relationship between Request Fulfillment and Access Management as defined by ITIL V3, and show how you would approach mapping the process activities, workflow, and considerations you need to make when applying that to a tool.

Guest blogger, Vernon Palango is the Principle Consultant for InteQ’s On Demand Service Management Consulting and Training organization.  In addition, he acts as the primary advisor for InfraDesk, InteQ’s On Demand Service Desk, clients during the implementation stage. www.inteqnet.com

This is interesting. I just made my post yesterday about Social Networking and the help desk and I hear about a vendor who has integrated some sort of social media into a help desk software product. In this case, ManageEngine integrated Twitter with the customer help desk software.

A little background first. When customers feel satisfied or frustrated, they generally vent out their feelings and opinions by calling support or emailing them. If they don’t get any response, they blog about their experiences. With Twitter, it just became easier. 140 characters is all it takes to capture the attention of an enterprise like Dell or Southwest. The Twitter revolution took enterprises by surprise when they were dragged into conversations they never initiated. The 140 characters customers and prospects were tweeting was all over the place and companies found themselves closely monitoring social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn to see what people were saying about them.

Companies like Comcast, Southwest and Dell have been known for tracking conversations in social media that involve their products or brand and responding to these users appropriately. If it is praise, a simple thank-you from the company can go a long way. But when addressing a complaint or an issue, the company can put out the flame before it becomes a fire.

But how do customer service departments keep track of such tweets? You can either hire someone to keep a watch on Twitter 24×7 and there are tools that can help you do that too (like Tweetdeck and Seesmic). But these tools don’t keep track (store) of these customer outbursts (not in all cases). So it made sense for customer support software to keep track of these tweets. That is exactly what ManageEngine is trying to do. ManageEngine SupportCenter Plus is a web-based customer support help desk software with request management, contact management, knowledge base, self service portal and remote control. The new version of SupportCenter Plus integrates with Twitter to keep track of relevant conversations that are happening on the social media platform.

Vinu Sreedharan, product manager at ManageEngine said in the company press release, “The new features in this release will help customer service departments reduce that time and increase overall effectiveness.  We have seen ManageEngine SupportCenter Plus transform customer help desk departments and the new enhancements are really our response to customer feedback. We are excited about the new Twitter integration as it allows not just the customer service department to keep track of questions but can also greatly aid organizations in their need to keep track of public image and branding.”

The new software helps support organizations identify and keep track of relevant conversations about their products and/or company. I personally think this is important because channels of communication have really opened up in today’s connected world. Keeping track of all your customer engagements is important and it is just a matter of time, when more vendors are going to integrate these channels into their offerings. This is going to benefit companies and enterprises keep track of all that the customers are saying wherever they are saying it. The best part is that end users are open to use any channel of communication they want and they can expect better customer service from organizations.

Pricing for the new software from ManageEngine starts at US$495 for two support reps.

How is Twitter affecting your organization? Are you seeing your customers use new social media to communicate across to you? If yes, what are you doing about it? Let us know in the comments below.

What would happen if our regular help desk integrated with social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, etc. Would it be possible? Will it be useful? Will it increase the load on the help desk or reduce it? Will it help the end user or hamper him?

ITIL itself defines the help desk as a “single point of contact”. Social networking talks about collaboration – multiple points of contact. Aren’t they really paradoxical?

Let’s look at how organizations function. They have multiple end users, an IT department with a support team  that helps the end users with most of their IT problems. The end user contacts the support team when he/she has a problem. The support team resolves the issue. And they have a system to keep track of all this work. Most companies are like this. Throw in a few ITIL concepts, and you set up processes for incident, problem, change management. Keep an inventory of all the assets in the organization. Call it the CMDB. And so it goes on..

Now let’s add some of that social networking in there. Let’s take Facebook as our first example. There is no doubt that Facebook is a popular web application and many users spend their daily time on this service. So why not integrate your help desk into Facebook? What does that mean? One possible meaning is that your users could directly report the problem to you via Facebook. So you build an app that integrates with your office helpdesk and users can directly report problems or request services from there. The support team can look into the request and close within the help desk and let the user by writing on his wall. There is one problem though. Would you want to tell the whole world about all the problems you are having at work? Are IT support teams confident to go out in the public space and show the world the stuff they are made of.

Twitter. The user tweets his problem to the support staff. Staff resolves the problem and tweets back. There could be an implementation of this for the intranet, where the user can simply open a common portal and enter their request and hit the send button. Other end users can see the common tweets and they can simply retweet it. So now the IT team knows they have a problem at hand. Yammer is like Twitter for an organization but I am not sure if it can be used as an alternative to a help desk software. It is not going to be easy to convince everyone to tweet their problems, when we are so used to email.

Twitter is already being used by the external help desk or the customer service department. We have heard of how Comcast and Dell have tracked end-user user conversations on Twitter and how this has become a whole new channel of communication for customer service.

Let’s take a look at some collaboration software like Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Would that be useful to the IT support enterprise? They could be used to edit technical documents among the IT staff (Wikis can be very useful for this). The end user can view these collaborated documents and use them to resolve the problem or access the service themselves. The IT team can check out what document has popular demand and take appropriate action.

So let’s come back to our first question – Would it be possible? Yes. But I don’t know of any vendor who has got these features already. The more time people are going to spend on the Internet and the more social networking sites become popular, people will only become more comfortable with this type of usage.

Will it be useful? Yes. But IT teams are not going to want a lot of exposure to the outside world. Most of the requests that come to the help desk and incidents and problems and we don’t want our users talk about our problems in the outside world. But we could try internalize it – use social networking features within the organizations and leverage the power of the cloud within your network.

Will it increase the load on the help desk or reduce it? Will it help the end user or hamper him? It would definitely help the help desk reduce its work load but I think it will only work for help desk that are open to new technologies. Let’s face it – there are many managers out there who are not going to like other people doing their job. But for the open-minded help desk, social networking would be the added advantage.

What do you think? Do you think social networking would help the help desk or the IT support team? Will it benefit the end user? Let us know in the comments below.

HDI Announces the 2009 Annual Practices & Salary Report, Presents an Overall Look at the State of the IT Support Industry

HDI, the world’s largest membership association for help desk and IT service and support professionals and the premier certification body for the industry, today announced the 2009 Annual Practices & Salary Report, a comprehensive study that presents an overall look at the state of the IT support industry. The report shows that the technical support industry is working hard to maintain its commitment to the service and support of end-users and customers, despite the difficult economic backdrop.

“The Annual Practices & Salary Report takes a deep dive into the state of the service and support industry. It offers an inside look at support centers’ practices used throughout the industry which assists managers and directors to validate existing practices, showcases new ideas for improving methods and procedures in support centers and also provides a set of data to which support centers can benchmark against,” said Rich Hand, HDI Executive Director of Membership. “Given the world’s current economic climate, support centers are working hard to maintain their commitment to the industry and meet the needs of their customers.”

The study was conducted with 1,053 participants from 11 industries between May and July 2009 from the United States, Australia, Canada, India and Philippines. The results illustrate behaviors and opinions of support centers in a wide array of industries, sizes, and organizations that range from local to international. The report is broken down into six categories, including Incident Management; Support Tools; Process, Procedures, and Strategies; Performance Metrics; Training, Certification, and Satisfaction; and Salaries.

Report highlights include:

• Even though support centers in general do not appear to be supporting more customers, the large majority of support centers continue to see an increase in their number of incidents. The leading contributor to increased incidents, once again, is attributed to changes in infrastructure and/or products.
• Self-help tools are the primary implementation initiative for 13 percent of support centers. This is up from 10 percent in 2008.
• The telephone continues to be the leading communication channel for incident management, followed by email. One-third of support centers respond to email incidents between 15 minutes and one hour and over one-third respond between one and four hours. Additionally, 70 percent of incidents are resolved with two or less email exchanges and fewer e-mail incidents are being converted to phone support than in 2008.
• The number of support centers whose employees are receiving bonuses is down five percent. Still, there are 19 percent of support centers whose management receives bonuses and 45 percent whose management and staff receive bonuses.
• Fewer support centers are outsourcing services in all areas except for one, hardware support and repair. The top reasons support centers are not outsourcing more are due to concerns about control of service, service quality, customer acceptance and then cost.
• Support managers foresee both hiring freezes and salary freezes in their support organizations. This is up 21.4 percent and 23.6 percent, respectively from 2008.
• Although the primary training focus for new hires is product knowledge, customer service remains the number one area that support staffs are being trained in overall. The Computer industry is currently providing the most training for its IT support staffs while Manufacturing and Retail provide very little.
• Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) seems to be particularly popular in Australia as well as large support centers and with those who provide internal support. Forty-three percent of support organizations are currently using or implementing ITIL and 21 percent are planning to implement some part of it.
• Sixty-five percent of support centers said that there is no direct charge to their customer for support services. This is up 5 percent from 2008.
• Sixty-three percent of support centers currently use Knowledge Management Software, while 20 percent are planning to add it. In addition, over 13 percent of support centers are calling it their primary initiative for tool implementation.
• While many support centers are embracing collaborative tools such as Share Point (30 percent) and Wikis (17.4 percent), they do not widely use social networking tools such as blogs, Linked IN, Twitter, Face Book, or My Space to provide support.

For more information about HDI or the 2009 Practice & Salary Report, contact HDI Executive Director of Marketing Allison Wroe, 719-785-5355, awroe@thinkhdi.com; or visit http://www.thinkhdi.com.

About HDI

HDI, a Think Services company, is the world’s largest IT service and support membership association and the industry’s premier certification and training body. Guided by an international panel of industry experts and practitioners, HDI is the leading resource for help desk/support center emerging trends and best practices. HDI provides members with a vast repository of resources, networking opportunities and the largest industry event – the HDI Annual Conference and Expo. Headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo., USA, HDI offers training in multiple languages and countries. For more information, visit http://www.thinkhdi.com or call +1 719.268.0174.

About Think Services

Think Services connects specialized communities worldwide using educational events, consulting, training, certification, membership, and innovative media. Providing comprehensive opportunities for people to learn from, network with, and inspire each other, Think Services builds strong brands and works within communities to foster a unique affinity with its products and services. The division’s flagship products include the Game Developers Conference, the Webby Award-winning Gamasutra.com, Game Developer magazine, the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI), and HDI. Think Services is a subsidiary of United Business Media, a global media and marketing services company with a market capitalization of more than $1.6 billion. To learn more, visit www.think-services.com.

I teach the ITIL V3 Foundations Course at least monthly, and without fail a student will ask me a question like “So… How exactly do I set up the incident management process in my help desk system?” at which point I have a discussion with the class about the difference between process and workflow.

This is part 1 of a three part series discussing how to “Bridge the Gap” between Service Desks, IT Processes, and Workflow.  In Part 1, I will describe the role IT Processes have, as defined by ITIL, in relation to the service desk.

Processes, or better stated Business Processes, are the entire set of activities, people, tools, etc… that contributes to a specific business outcome.  ITIL describes a process as “…a set of coordinated activities combining and implementing resources and capabilities in order to produce an outcome, which directly or indirectly creates value for an external customer or stakeholder” (Service Strategy, 2007).

The processes that the Service Desk has the most frequent interaction with include Incident Management, Request Fulfillment, Problem Management, Change Management and others.  The confusion comes in when the people working within the process lose track of what a process really is; a set of inputs which are processed into outputs based on defined triggers.

So what’s the importance of designing & implementing a good process in that case?

To answer that question, I ask another, is it important for the rest of the organization to define the business processes that deliver products and services to your organization’s customers?  Of course it is, and IT Processes are the business processes of the IT Service Organization, providing the measureable outcomes whereby success of the IT Business can be understood.

Put another way… Processes identify the outcomes you need to measure to be successful in delivering the value of IT Services to the business.  Without a clear definition of success, the likelihood that you will define your work, policies, and procedures correctly is chancy at best.

Processes, as defined by ITIL have three factors that must be considered.

The Process Itself which is defined by the activities, procedures, work instructions, roles, and most importantly the measureable metrics for the process.  The activities are what we usually are discussing when talking about the workflow automation done in service desk tools, but those activities, do not make up the process.

More important than the activities are the process measures, for without a way to objectively measure success, any process is ultimately doomed.  Without measures, there is no way to reliably show the value in managing a process and, without value, IT enters the familiar death spiral of declining trust with the business; becoming viewed as overhead to be cut instead of a provider of valuable services.

The Process Controls “are the activities of planning and regulating a process, with the objective of performing a process in an efficient and consistent manner” (Service Design, 2007).   Processes need owners to be accountable for the success of the process, and to insure that the process is improved over time according to the results of the measures.  Policies also need to be in place to ensure that the process goals are achieved within an appropriate set of business rules.

Process Enablers are the resources (primarily people and technology), as well as process capabilities (Knowledge & Skills in the organization as an example) which define the constraints under which the process can be executed.  All processes should be designed with an understanding of the capabilities of the organization in terms of process enablers.

Bringing this all together, processes give definition to how the IT Organization in general and the Service Desk organization specifically can measure success.  So, as we consider the value of tools for our processes, their importance is in the ability to:

MEASURE the effectiveness of the process through the reporting of key metrics
CONTROL the process through the implementation of business rules
and
ENABLE the process through workflow automation

Remember, Processes are not the tools, and the tools are not the process.  But, a full understanding of the relationship between the processes in the organizations, and the tools that enable, measure, and control the processes is required to successfully manage the modern IT Service Organization effectively.

In Part 2 of this series, I will go into the value of workflow to the service desk, and how it differs from process.  Part 3 will bring it all together, and give some advice on how to bring process together with workflow, and increase the maturity and value delivered by Service Desks in the IT Organization.

Guest blogger, Vernon Palango is the Principle Consultant for InteQ’s On Demand Service Management Consulting and Training organization.  In addition, he acts as the primary advisor for InfraDesk, InteQ’s On Demand Service Desk, clients during the implementation stage. www.inteqnet.com

AUSTIN, Texas – (Business Wire) Spiceworks™, Inc. released a new plug-in for its free social IT management software application, which enables IT professionals to automatically regulate the power consumption of networked computers. The downloadable Power Manager plug-in – developed in cooperation with Intel Corporation – is designed to link everyday network and systems management tasks with green IT initiatives. Spiceworks estimates that if half its 800,000 users worldwide deploy the new power management plug-in, they could save more than $500 million in annual electricity costs and eliminate 3 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Currently more than 28 million desktops, laptops and servers are managed by the free Spiceworks IT Desktop.

“Building more energy-efficient PCs and devices is only one step in making IT green,” said Scott Abel, co-founder and CEO of Spiceworks. “The software that manages networked devices can also play a more active role in saving energy. Today with the help of Intel, we’ve tuned the Spiceworks IT Desktop software to do just that so our growing network of businesses can do more to save money and help the environment.”

The new power management plug-in can be downloaded for free from the Spiceworks Plug-in Center at http://community.spiceworks.com/plugin/172 and includes the following features:

* Remote Power Consumption Management – allows users to remotely manage the power consumption of PCs, laptops, and other networked devices. This includes the ability to use Wake On LAN and Intel® vPro™ technology features to power-on and -off devices based on schedules and other criteria;
* Power Management Dashboard – shows a visual map of networked machines and devices that are powered on or off; and
* Dollar Savings View – displays estimates of dollars saved per day and month based on current price/kwh and watts used by networked devices.

“Many organizations are adding environmental sustainability goals to their constant search for new opportunities to be socially responsible and to save money,” said Rick Echevarria, vice president and general manager, Intel Business Client Platforms. “Our collaboration with Spiceworks to develop the Power Manager plug-in for Intel® Core™2 processors with vPro™ technology-based PCs, provides businesses a cost-efficient way to more carefully and actively manage the valuable energy consumed by their IT networks.”

The Spiceworks IT Desktop is a free social IT management application that’s used by over 800,000 IT professionals and 75,000 managed service providers (MSPs) worldwide to automatically inventory, monitor, troubleshoot, report on and run a help desk for IT networks. It is the first business application to embed crowdsourcing, social networking and community collaboration features directly into an IT professional’s daily workflow. Currently Spiceworks is used in 196 countries worldwide to support 26 million employees and manage 40 million technology devices.

More information on Spiceworks can be found at www.spiceworks.com. Follow Spiceworks on Twitter: http://twitter.com/spiceworks. To connect with Spiceworks on Facebook visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/Spiceworks/15382903707.

About Spiceworks

Founded by network and systems management software pioneers, Spiceworks develops the first free social IT management application that incorporates crowdsourcing to help over 800,000 businesses and 75,000 managed service providers (MSPs) simplify everything IT. Spiceworks makes it easy for IT pros to manage their networks, collaborate to solve technology problems, and find the best practices, products and services they need day-to-day. Through its Voice of ITTM market research program, the company also publishes data on important technology usage, staffing and purchasing trends by small and medium businesses worldwide. Spiceworks is a privately held company headquartered in Austin, Texas with funding from Austin Ventures and Shasta Ventures. For more information visit www.spiceworks.com.

Spiceworks and Voice of IT are trademarks of Spiceworks, Inc. All other names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

For Spiceworks
Karl Scholz, 512-493-0909
karl.scholz@virtualprdirector.com

We are closer to 2010 and the recession seems to have slowed down. But everyone is careful. Companies are still trying to keep costs low. Every expense needs to be justified. And that affects the IT department too. Technology is used to keep those costs down. The IT department needs to make the right choices in getting efficient technologies that will reduce the cost of IT.

Apart from the help desk that is implemented to keep track of requests, there are tools out there that can help the IT manager reduce the workload on his support team.

Here are some examples of where the right technology can help the IT support system of any organization reduce costs:

Knowledge Management: This really is not a very new concept. As part of the IT help desk, knowledge management helps the technicians and managers make better and efficient decisions when addressing an incident or a problem. This can be taken one step further where this information/database is made available to the end users – which means that the end users can search the knowledge base at any time, especially before they submit an incident or service request. Most service desk vendors implement this as part of their self service portal.

Self Service Portals: Self Service Portals give end users access to the common knowledge base and the ability to request services or log incidents directly with the IT support team. Self Service Portals are also evolving into Service Catalogs, an ITIL v3 concept, is like a restaurant menu, only in this case, the items on the menu are the services offered by the IT support team. End users can browse through the catalog and order the service they require. The advantage of having self service portals or service catalogs in place is that most of the recording and choosing the service is done by the end user. The IT support team needs only to fulfill the service.

Remote Control: Remote control allows support staff to connect to the end user’s desktop and troubleshoot an incident or fulfil a service. It can reduce the time taken to close a ticket. The idea being that the technician or representative does not have to go to the end user’s location can save time. It also helps support remote or traveling staff.

Asset Management: Keeping track of assets is becoming crucial in today’s economy and corporate goverance. Assets, both hardware and software, needs to be kept track of. There are two advantages of this – 1. Access to the data when a IT support staff needs it. Troubleshooting with details of the asset makes it easier. 2. License compliance. This is hot because nobody wants to get into trouble because they do not have the proper licenses. Asset management, especially Software Asset Management (SAM) also helps in the optimum use of these licenses.

What are the tools you are using to make your IT Support team more efficient and effective? Are there any other tools we should be talking about? Please add your views and thoughts in the comments below. Thanks!

Survey responses collected from ITSM professionals visiting the InteQ booth at the itSMF Fusion 2009 Conference indicate ‘ease of adoption’ as their most important factor when choosing a service desk solutions provider

BEDFORD, MA, November 17, 2009 – InteQ, a leading provider of SaaS and On Demand IT Service Management solutions, has released the survey results of a study conducted at the itSMF Fusion Conference in Dallas last month which polled visitors to their booth on the most important factor when considering a service desk application. Nearly 82% of ITSM professionals surveyed indicated ‘ease of adoption’ as being the most important factor in their consideration process.

IT organizations continue to struggle with the challenges of managing and maintaining enterprise service desk applications due to the impact across the enterprise. The results of this survey indicate that professionals have recognized the disruption brought on by a forced upgrade resulting in a re-implementation or application change and value a solution that is easily adopted. InteQ recognizes adoption as the ability to fully implement the application in conjunction with the pace at which the staff is trained and end users are actively utilizing it. InteQ clients have typically rolled out the SaaS service desk application within 30-90 days across the enterprise.

The second highest factor according to survey results was the ability to automate ITIL best practices. As IT organizations continue to take on more projects that have a direct effect on the business, automation becomes an essential consideration due to the ability to conserve and reallocate time and resources previously devoted to manually ensuring processes were adhered to. InteQ customers have experienced the application ensuring 100% accuracy due to its unique data-driven and action-based application architecture.

“The service desk may be the only IT resource guaranteed to touch everyone within an organization and an application change effects everyone, not just the IT support team. It was no surprise to us that ease of adoption was valued as the most important factor when considering a change and we take pride in our ability to promise this to our clients,” Yash Shah, President and CTO, InteQ. “Our service desk application, InfraDesk, is simple to deploy and simple to use. Client have adopted and fully implemented this solution in weeks and through its SaaS delivery model, upgrades to the application are seamless and non-disruptive; both important factors to consider when choosing a service desk application.”

In addition to ease of adoption and automation of ITIL best practices, the total cost of ownership (TCO) and time to production ranked considerably high. The following were the results based on feedback provided by a sample of the over 1500 ITSM professionals surveyed by InteQ at the 2009 itSMF Fusion conference:

Gartner indicates “IT organizations are looking to IT service desk tools to help reduce service and support costs, increase end-user productivity, align themselves closer to the business, provide high-end user satisfaction, and be the hub for a larger IT service management (ITSM) suite of tools…. Clients want quicker implementations due to limited budgets and a need to prove quicker return on investment (ROI), but also because they want to follow industry (ITIL) best practices and don’t want to customize.” *

The company’s ITIL SaaS Service Desk solution was designed and developed based on the company’s historical knowledge both implementing and actively using service desk tools. The result was a solution that is easily adopted and implemented due to pre-configured workflows based on ITIL best practices and built-in auto-routing functionality. InfraDesk clients are up and running within weeks (days in some cases) and have noted a significant increase in end-user adoption through the self-service portal; a clear validation of the ease and value of the application.

InfraDesk – ITIL SaaS Service Desk

InfraDesk is an ITIL SaaS Service Desk application delivered as a service over the web based on InteQ’s unique ITIL process automation approach and experience. The simple and robust enterprise service desk solution provides the foundation for IT organizations Service Delivery and Operations to ultimately support overall Service Strategy. Through its Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery model, InfraDesk enables large organizations to eliminate costly maintenance upgrades and lengthy implementation cycles commonly associated with traditional on-premise software while providing the affordability to small and medium-sized organizations without sacrificing functionality or flexibility. Since its introduction to the service desk market, InfraDesk has been implemented in organizations globally accelerating value and savings for clients. InfraDesk was also the recipient of the Network Product Guide ‘Best in SaaS’ and the American Business Awards ‘Best New SaaS Product’.

About InteQ

Founded in 1995, InteQ is a leader in on demand IT Service Management (ITSM), providing a comprehensive suite of managed services (IT Monitoring-as-a-service and IT Management-as-a-service), an ITIL SaaS service desk solution, and award-winning training and consulting in ITIL – the IT Infrastructure Library. InteQ’s on demand solutions have been successfully implemented in over 90 countries through its global service delivery model with operations in the United States and India. For more information, visit www.inteqnet.com or contact 888.4IT.MGMT.

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InteQ Corporation, InteQ, the InteQ logo and InfraDesk are registered trademarks of InteQ Corporation. All other product and company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only and may be property of their respective owners.

*Gartner Magic Quadrant for the IT Service Desk, published October 16, 2009