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IT will achieve its mandate from the business when the service management goals are reached -- the customer is satisfied and
the business is efficiently supported.
Business efficiency is defined as being in total control of all aspects of the business. As the business needs change, IT must
quickly adapt to support the changing demands of the business. The flexibility and features of the underlying tool is a key
component of IT being able to adapt to support the service management needs of the business. How do you know which tool fits
your business? This whitepaper will help you define your needs, explain what is important in choosing a tool, compare tools that
are available in the marketplace and allow for a more informed decision to be made.
First, you need to define how your business can benefit by asking the following questions:
• Is your organization committed to solving issues and answering IT related questions in a specific timeframe?
• Does your organization have procedures that you perform regularly - such as recurring IT requests, new employee requests
or submitting purchase orders that require management approvals?
• Do you need to manage an inventory of IT office equipment and its performance?
• Do you provide specific services to your customers, such as moving assistance or staff software training?
If your answer is "yes", a service management solution will definitely help you to improve your service.
What can a service management software solution do for your organization?
You may be wondering what a service management software tool can do for you? If your tool supports all of your organization’s
IT service processes, including the automation of workflows, simply stated, your staff members' jobs will be easier and you will be
in better control. Before going into detail about what kind of tool could help you, the following are some examples of where your
business can benefit from a service management tool. These examples can provide a significant Return on Investment (ROI) for
your business -- a very important factor to consider when selecting the right solution. Please contact us if you are interested in
more information about the specifics on an ROI for your organization.
IT help desk
A thorough examination of your IT help desk is often the first step to determine if you need a service management tool. As you
know, an organization's IT help desk is its lifeblood and one of the most frequently contacted departments in any business.
Anyone within the organization with questions about their system or software contacts the IT department and expects an
answer or solution immediately.
As well, since the continuity of your business is directly affected by your IT department’s actions, it is important that you have
control over it. Tasks such as automating priorities, monitoring requests, assigning tasks to specialists, and managing vendors -
which a service management tool can provide -- will ensure your help desk stays organized.
You will want to make sure that your service management tool can perform the following functions:
• Log problems
• Provide a central contact point
• Help engineers solve issues quickly by presenting solutions through a knowledgebase
• Provide a way to get specialists involved in solving the issue
• The system must be able to receive and view requests through various communication channels including web, e-mail,
phone, mobile, etc. - known as a "multi-channel" response
• Log questions for a person and also for the piece of equipment or asset that is experiencing the problem
• Manage your equipment and software
• Manage changes in your organization and show the impact a change has on the rest of the organization
• Automate customer reviews on your service
• Create management reports which help you monitor your service at different levels: management view, operational view
and personal view
The features above are just some of the functions you should look for in a service management tool. The best approach is to sit
down with a team from your organization including representatives from IT, end users and management and decide what your
business truly needs.
Supporting the help desk with a service management tool will allow you to:
• Manage your IT team better
• Ensure your people are freed up to focus on servicing people instead of answering the telephone
• Ensure agreed-upon response times can be measured
• Be informed on what is happening in your organization
• Locate the weaknesses in your business -- staff, equipment or software
• Ensures your IT will staff prioritize their tasks using well-known solutions - and lets end-users see the results in familiar
formats
• See and assess valuable business information - which can save you money
• Allows you to proactively manage your services - providing high level support
IT help desk and ITIL
Your business may also decide to configure your help desk
using the ITIL approach. There are many service management
tools with pre-built ITIL processes, which will force your business
to significantly change your processes before being able to use
the tool. As noted earlier, every business is unique - yours
included. Therefore, you must make sure that you are able to
adapt the general ITIL framework to support your organization’s
ITIL implementation. In other words, the tool you choose should
adapt easily to your needs. It is important that as your business
grows and your needs change, you should be able to modify the
tool without having to call the vendor!
When a customer calls in with a software issue, the help desk agent
will log the issue using the help desk tool. If the development
department is not using the help desk tool, the agent will inform
development and does not have access to the review and resolution of
the software issue and as a result is not able to provide the level of
support to your customer. Therefore, when looking for a service
management solution, the solution should support the development
team’s process as well.
Another important factor in Self Service Portals is working with web forms. Look for a solution that can deliver a service catalog
in which web forms can be published to your end user community. Using web forms will help you to auto categorize, prioritize
and assign requests to the right persons with the right skills.
When you have an up to date service portal you will see an immediate ROI--in cost as well as in satisfaction. Your end users will
have easy access to knowledge articles, have the ability to access their requests and can view in real time the status of their
issues. The IT department will log fewer phone calls, fewer emails and have a much better overview on what is going on.
Infrastructure Management
Managing the IT infrastructure is a key activity of any support department There are many monitoring tools on the market which
can be configured to proactively and reactively monitor critical applications, networks and hardware. With proactive
management, you can set notification thresholds. For example, when the CPU utilization on a critical server reaches 70%, notify
the systems administrator, who then takes the appropriate steps to ensure there isn’t a failure. Reactive management
processes failures. For example if a server suddenly becomes unavailable, notify the appropriate resources so the failure can be
resolved within the SLA defined by the business. Monitoring tools do a great job at tracking events and raising flags. However,
monitoring tools are not designed to manage the resolution of configured events, based on the requirements of the business; or
provide the necessary operational and management reports. These are functions of the service management tool.
Select a service management tool which will easily integrate with any monitoring tool. Most organizations use a variety of
monitoring tools to manage specific components of the infrastructure. The service management tool must be easily integrated
with multiple tools. The integration must be simple, to allow your resources to configure and re-configure the integration without
assistance from the vendor; yet robust enough to manage any event of interest raised by the monitoring tool.
Tickets created from infrastructure events have to be managed based on the needs of the business. A key component of the
integration of the service management and monitoring tool is the ability to easily define the requirements of the business for the
management, resolution and measurement of the event. These include severities, response times, resolution times, escalation
parameters, intelligent routing, corporate policies, workflow and operational & management reports. The service management
tool must also perform actions, such as publishing all alerts on a central dashboard and whiteboard.
All vendors should make their architecture visible to customers. Below an example of IncidentMonitor™'s architecture. The three
rings in the centre represent the server or servers, depending on the size of your environment.
Well-designed architecture provides a distinct advantage over other systems that may not have been designed to accommodate
change. Open and adjustable architecture can adapt to change with very little effort or additional cost. The advantages of well-
designed architecture may not be readily apparent to you until you need to make some changes to your system in order to
support your business.
Evaluation: The demonstration should help you make your choice. If you still feel you are lacking information, request an
evaluation version from the vendor. Be sure that you plan a couple of days for the evaluation, and that you use the tool for
several hours each day. Try several scenarios with the tool and ask the vendor to show you some basic administrative actions. If
you have any questions while using the tool, call the vendor. They should have someone ready to speak to you and talk you
through the process.
Quote and order: Once you have run your demo and evaluation, and have further narrowed down your choices, there are a few
criteria to use when asking for a quote. We have found lower-priced vendors may offer you less expensive licenses to start, but
the costs may climb over the long term. It is important that you make a calculation of the cost of implementing your service
management tool over three years. Questions should include:
• What are your one-time costs for licenses?
• What is your yearly returning cost?
• Is there training provided and what is the result of that training?
• Are you able to build your own processes or adapt existing processes after the training?
• How much services are needed from the vendor to get the software successful implemented?
Our goal is to help customers reduce running costs, manage change, implement a fully functional advanced software solution
and lower the cost of ownership.
Monitor 24-7 is a software development organization focused on service management. Years of experience and many different
customers have brought us where we are today. We believe we have proven ourselves and we are very proud of our flagship
IncidentMonitor -- an enterprise service management solution which is being used in many different environments, from very
simple helpdesk to very complex ITIL and SOX oriented organizations.
Monitor 24-7’s staff are highly skilled senior people who have proven their skills in service management and software
development. Our engineers and developers use their skills not only behind the laptop but face-to-face with customers. Our
unique approach along with the flat hierarchy of our organization means we understand the needs and problems of our
customers. This understanding is reflected in the ongoing development of IncidentMonitor. New features have often been
requested by our customers. Since our start in 1999, Monitor 24-7 is growing in North America and Europe. We are
headquartered in Toronto, Canada and our European office is in The Netherlands. Monitor 24-7 supports customers and
resellers in more than 20 countries.
About IncidentMonitor
Monitor 24-7's award winning IncidentMonitor™ service management tool delivers state-of-the-art automating of business
processes and intelligent workflow capabilities in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of other solutions. Its unique
single platform approach does not require expensive customization or additional modules; and processes can be automated to
reduce time and increase efficiency. Any process can be quickly and cost-effectively automated, such as service desk, change
management, SOX audit requirements, HR, contact management, etc. IncidentMonitor's ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library)-
compatible open framework also allows for rapid implementation of enterprise level service desk capabilities without being tied to
legacy systems or costly customization.
With IncidentMonitor, businesses can improve their service to internal and external customers, while reducing costs and
meeting compliance requirements.
IncidentMonitor's out-of-the-box functionality, combined with a simple licensing model, allows organizations of any size to enjoy
advanced help desk capabilities immediately, without the time and expense of adding modules or costly customization. Built from
the ground up using an open platform, Monitor 24-7 solutions can work with existing legacy systems and can be easily adapted
to accommodate changing needs. Because it is based on an open platform, it can be easily customized and maintained without
incurring the high costs normally associated with implementing and adapting an enterprise service management system.
Monitor 24-7 solutions are used by a broad base of global customers in a variety of industries.
For details please contact our sales team at +31 23 525 6975 (Europe) or at +1 416 410 2716,
or via email at sales@monitor24-7.com. www.monitor24-7.com