Compco Resources

INTERNAL IT SERVICE PROVIDERS USE 3 KEYS TO AVOID THE BUDGET PINCH

2007-10-12T09:12:25.71875-05:00

IT, network and telecom professionals attending the Tennessee Technology User’s Association (TTUA) all agreed that, as internal service providers, their departments are feeling the pinch. The complexity of IT products and services they deliver is growing while the staff to handle critical administrative tasks like move, add, change activity (a.k.a. “MAC’s”, “Change Management” or “Work Orders”) is constant or decreasing. TTUA invited Compco’s Randy Burns to present potential solutions based on market research and his 25 years of experience in IT and Telecommunications management solutions. Burns noted that “According to market research the cost of manually receiving a MAC request is very high – as much $10 to $50 -- depending on the complexity of the request and how much difficulty the customer service rep has in contacting the customer. Clearly we need more cost effective ways of handling customer interactions. According to Hartford Hospital, Penn and others, effective customer web self service request processes can drastically reduce this cost and at the same time increase customer satisfaction.” When analyzing this opportunity three key success factors quickly emerge.

KEY #1. Customers want one place where they can request any IT, network or telecom product or and service. Customers are often perplexed and frustrated as they struggle to determine, what their choices are and who to contact for a particular need. To further compound the frustration, work groups within IT often have their own disparate tracking systems. Creating a centralized self service portal simplifies this process for the customer and creates significant cost saving opportunities. In addition, a centralized approach provides management with a comprehensive view of requests for products and services and a central place to metrics to measure performance against service level agreements.

KEY #2. Standardize the product/service offering as much as possible and provide specific web forms to capture the unique information the customer needs to provide for each type of product/service. Standardized offerings lower overall costs by increasing buying power and greatly simplify the process for the customer. Accurately capturing the basic but critical information needed to process a request not only reduces data entry time for Customer Service Rep’s, it eliminates miscommunication and slashes the time spent on in routine communication.

KEY #3. Make sure the self service forms are easy to use, offer access to in-depth product information and conform to your organizations unique terminology and business processes. Ease of use is one of the greatest determinants in the acceptance of a self service process. Design tools must provide the flexibility to streamline the customer experience wherever possible. Here are two quick examples. Menu and shopping cart choices should use business terminology that is familiar to the customer (not technical jargon). The shopping forms should group interdependent activities with easy selection using choice lists or check boxes. When the customer requests multiple line items be installed at a particular location, don’t make the customer re-enter the location each time, pre-populate the field based on the customer’s initial entry.

While the traditional centralized IT Help Desk works well for handling incidents and support issues, unfortunately these tools are often not the best choice for implementing a centralized self service MAC portal or shopping cart. MAC requests often involve multiple line items and critical data elements for each line item may need to be different (e.g. configuration details or location for installation). Traditional help desk applications push this information into a description fields and losing the ability to do critical data validation and entry streamlining. In addition, many central help desks are not equipped for efficient web development or customization or the costs are prohibitive.

Burns noted that “This is the reason Compco developed the IT Shopping Cart process with Mpower Customization Technology. When the University of Pennsylvania IT group decided to centralize all network, telecom and IT requests in a common portal, they evaluated internal development, Remedy, Computer Associates and Compco. Based on the flexibility and efficiencies of Compco’s Mpower Customization Technology, Penn found Compco’s solution to be, by far the most cost effective. >

This weblog is sponsored by Compco, Inc.

Insight 100 Fall Conference 2007

2007-09-06T17:19:29.515-05:00

Insight 100 is a users' forum for the Nortel SL-100/CS 2100.

October 28-29

Hilton Charlotte Center City
Charlotte, NC

This weblog is sponsored by Compco, Inc.

Educause 2007 Annual Conference

2007-09-06T17:11:01.406-05:00

This year's theme is “Information Futures: Aligning Our Missions”

http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?SECTION_ID=223&bhcp=1

October 23-25

Washington State Convention Center - Booth #2703
Seattle, Washington

This weblog is sponsored by Compco, Inc.

ACUTA Fall Conference

2007-09-06T16:47:35.531-05:00

October 14-16

Hilton Minneapolis - Booth #109
Minneapolis, MN

http://www.acuta.org/events/seminars/fse07.cfm

Track 1: Supporting Converged Mobile Communications
Track 2: Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery

This weblog is sponsored by Compco, Inc.

Tennessee Technology Users Association (TTUA) Meeting

2007-09-06T16:36:20-05:00

Randy Burns, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Compco, will speak at the upcoming TTUA meeting on 9/13 at Compco.

Topic:

Trends in Customer Self-Service Applications

How a centralized help desk for IT/Network/Telecom sets the stage for centralized service request processing and other customer self-service functions.

This weblog is sponsored by Compco, Inc.

MySoft Bar Code Scanner Applications

2007-09-05T15:39:20.109-05:00

The Symbol 9090 wireless scanner runs Windows Moible 5.0 allowing entry directly into MySoft.net Mobile screens and eliminating the need for a 3rd party interface. This inegrates the power of MySoft.net Inventory Management with an easy to use, mobile bar code scanner.

Order Inventory

Quickly generate and submiit new orders right from the bar code scanner. This allows you to add items to an order in real time as you walk the warehouse.

Receive Inventory

Scan in inventory received right on the dock or truck. The order status is is updated in real time and prompts you to provide information on unrecieved quaitties.

Pull Orders

Scan/Enter items pulled by work order number. Inventory counts are adjusted and items are allocated. This information is now available to everyone handing the work order in real time.

Move Inventory

Easily scan out/in quatities as you move inventory between storage locations. Track the location of available items by serial number.

MySoft Bar Code Scanner Applications reduce the need for paper inventory management with mobile tools that integrate easily with a powerful enterprise asset managment system.

This weblog is sponsored by Compco, Inc.

Implementing an IT Asset Management System for the Future - A Data Quality Perspective

2007-09-05T15:22:25.671-05:00

If you have decided it's time to implement an asset tracking and management system, you may be considering what type of system to implement. There are many off the shelf tools that could potentially be used, such as Excel, Access. There are open source database systems like mySQL. You can build your own system on a served database platform such as Oracle or SQL Server, or purchase a commercial product ready to implement. One thing that really needs to be considered for a successful implementation is "data quality", both in terms of how system design will affect quality and how choices made during implementation will affect it.

More...

This weblog is sponsored by Compco, Inc.