This is not ITIL v4, but an update of the existing edition since the framework will for the most part will remain unchanged.
Since ITIL 3 was first released a change control log has captured 312 issues about the five core ITIL publications from user feedback. Feedback has also come from the ITIL v3 training community about inconsistencies that exist between the fire core publications and the concepts in the Service Strategy volume that “users are finding hard to grasp”.
Most comments center around the need to update the Service Strategy as well as other housekeeping on the five core books. No date for when the update will occur has been announced.
]]>For the first time ever, SDI surveyed end users to determine the IT service management market’s favorite vendors. Service-now.com and three other vendors were selected as finalists for the award based on end-user nominations and feedback.
SDI judges interviewed the four vendor finalists and Service-now.com was selected as the winner of the 2009 IT Service & Support Technology Supplier of the Year award.
“Service-now.com demonstrates a passion for the success of their customers and a commitment to changing the face of the IT service management technology industry,” according to the SDI judges.
The judges also said Service-now.com won the award for:
Kevin Kimber, Service-now.com senior account executive, said, “Service-now.com is breaking new ground in the IT service management industry by providing customers with a better application through modern software as a service. Our business model keeps us focused on customer success. We don’t think it was coincidence that the first customer-nominated SDI award was won by a SaaS vendor.”
Service-now.com requested and received a high volume of nominations from its user community. After earning finalist status, Service-now.com demonstrated innovative product development, exemplary business success, a unique delivery model, post-sales customer care, and value for the money among other things.
The SDI Service Desk & IT Support Excellence Awards aim to promote and celebrate every aspect of IT service excellence, professionalism and innovation in the support industry. The prestigious awards were announced during the SDI Annual Conference on June 9 and recognize the outstanding achievements of IT service management teams across Europe.
For more information visit the Service-Now web site.
]]>The top three issues for today’s service desk have been revealed by Hornbill Systems, a leading provider of service management software with the ‘human touch’. Visitors to Hornbill’s stand at the recent Service Desk & IT Support Show in London were asked to disclose their major challenges in running a successful service desk.
The poll of more than 150 respondents, representing a broad range of organizations in both the commercial and public sector, found that the most significant obstacles to delivering excellent customer service and supporting the overall business or organization are:
A significant proportion of respondents mentioned the definition and management of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) as another challenge, particularly in global organizations where the support of diverse SLAs in different countries, languages and across multiple time zones is crucial to maintaining excellent levels of customer satisfaction.
The issue of globalization re-emerged especially in UK-based companies whose service desk staff work within a traditional 9-5 framework but where the business environment requires them to operate on a 24/7 basis often in small teams and in fire-fighting mode. Lack of resource is further complicated by the fact that many service desk managers claim it is difficult to find the right quality of staff to operate in today’s service desk environment.
Gerry Sweeney, CEO of Hornbill Systems commented: “Our visitors highlighted some interesting priorities: whilst processes and best practice frameworks such as ITIL, and technology designed to help users help themselves like self-service, come relatively low down on their list of issues, being able to capture and share customer information is more important. Getting closer to customers’ needs and wants is pivotal to creating an enhanced customer experience. This is what Hornbill calls the ‘human touch’ – putting customers at the core of everything we do and developing technology that can be used to drive excellence and prevent process stagnation.”
Hornbill has published a research paper, in conjunction with the Service Desk Institute (SDI), entitled “Computer Says No!” which demonstrates that process aligned with the ‘human touch’ is widely regarded as the best way to provide service excellence, and is driving the interaction between the service desk and users. To download a copy of Hornbill’s latest white paper, please go to http://www.hornbill.com
]]>While that responsibility persists, today’s help/service desk is at the core of IT Service Management (ITSM) including ITIL domains such as asset management, Configuration Management Systems, change management, knowledge management, service catalog and more.
“EMA has long believed that the service desk represents an area of investment for the enterprise,” states Lisa Erickson-Harris, EMA research director and study leader. “Our research confirmed that – even in this down economy – companies view the help/service desk as a place where spending can drive returns through technology automation, the introduction of self-service and consolidation in operations.”
For this study, EMA surveyed 158 IT professionals with help/service desk responsibility and familiarity with their organization’s ITSM initiatives. This quantitative data was complemented by 14 in-depth telephone interviews. The research examined major initiatives taking place in corporate help/service desk operations and explored topics such as best practices, operational metrics, management priorities and integration needs.
Some of the key findings include:
“While the help/service desk has a lot on its plate,” Erickson-Harris continues. “There are clear opportunities for significant operational cost savings. EMA believes that efforts to expand the footprint of the service desk will also improve the user experience and raise the credibility of IT throughout the organization.”
Erickson-Harris will share additional highlights from the study during a free 45-minute Webinar on April 23. To further support enterprises looking to evolve their help desk into a modern service desk, EMA also offers a free Service Desk/Help Desk Solutions Center that profiles 17 leading products.
The complete research report is available for purchase online at the special price of $395 through May 8, 2009.
]]>In today’s challenging economic climate, organizations have shifted focus to customer service and retention. Organizations must implement the tools that provide the best ROI, and the availability of the Web Help Desk Lite Edition as a Software as a Service (SaaS) model or On-Premise Server License ensures that an organization of any size and technical infrastructure can provide, track, and report on customer relations and deliver quality customer satisfaction.
“Organizations demand measurable value in their investments and are seeking alternatives to expensive, heavyweight software packages and hard to maintain in-house solutions” said Web Help Desk, VP, Terry Siddall. “If you currently have a costly solution in place and use only a minority of its functionality, take the time to explore the Web Help Desk Lite Edition. We have achieved a great balance of features and price that can satisfy the needs of most customers and save them money at the same time.”
Web Help Desk Lite Edition offers a strong feature set, simple implementation, ease of use, email integration, flexibility, scalability, and an unparalleled user interface. This powerful feature set is all backed by an industry leading, knowledgeable technical support team.
The Web Help Desk’s hosted Lite Edition builds on a near decade long tradition of providing a secure, efficient, high-speed platform at a fraction of the cost of comparable solutions, eliminating the need to maintain a costly server infrastructure. A “try it before you buy it” hosted trial period ensures that an organization’s requirements are met with zero financial investment or risk.
The Web Help Desk Lite Edition is a cross-platform, vendor neutral server side application that can be installed on any Windows operating system, Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX. Organizations who maintain solutions in-house can easily deploy the Web Help Desk on existing hardware along side existing applications.
As the complexities of your organization and demand to provide enhanced customer service increase, upgrading from Web Help Desk Lite to Pro is a great option. Upgrading is a simple license key change, so there is no need install additional software for on-premise upgrades. SaaS customers can be instantly switched from Lite to Pro as well.
For more details and a free help desk software download, visit the Web Help Desk website http://www.webhelpdesk.com or call +1-510-279-2251.
About Web Help Desk:
Founded in 1998, the Web Help Desk software suite is the leading cross-platform service desk management solution for help desk and customer support professionals who seek to simplify and control their increasingly complex service environments. The extensive feature set of the Web Help Desk software addresses critical IT and support areas, including: Incident and Problem Management, Asset and Desktop Management, Knowledge Management, and Approval Workflow.
Numara FootPrints 9 is the latest version of the Numara Software award-winning service desk management solution. The new version features new, expanded support for IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) version 3 service lifecycle best practices and extensive usability enhancements, including Numara FootPrints Mobile – a unique mobile help desk feature giving IT professionals the freedom to access accounts and address issues without being restricted to one location.
The release further demonstrates the company’s ongoing focus on delivering advanced technology to its customers at an affordable price, and helping service organizations deliver a world-class experience to their service customers.
“We’re honored that Numara FootPrints continues to be recognized as one of the most innovative products on the market,” said David Weiss, president and CEO of Numara Software. “Numara FootPrints 9 is an incredibly practical and flexible IT Service Management solution, and receiving this award is a testament to the company’s focus on its customers, and helping them solve their most complex IT service desk needs.”
“I am pleased to honor Numara Software for their hard work and accomplishments. Their commitment to quality and excellence benefit the contact center experience as well as ROI for the companies that use them,” said Nadji Tehrani, executive group publisher and editor-in-chief of Customer Interaction Solutions. “For 11 years, Customer Interaction Solutions magazine has recognized the companies which demonstrate excellence in technological advancement and application refinements.”
The 11th Annual Product of the Year Award winners will be featured in the January 2009 issue of Customer Interaction Solutions magazine.
Numara FootPrints 9 is offered in either an on-premise license or hosted. For more information, including a complete list of features or to download a trial version, please visit: www.numarasoftware.com/FootPrints.asp.
About Numara Software
Serving over 50,000 customer sites worldwide, Numara Software is a global leader in providing practical software solutions for service management to IT professionals. From a single technician running a help desk to 1000 technicians managing a complex service desk, IT organizations of all sizes trust our award-winning solutions, featuring Numara Track-It! and Numara FootPrints, to track requests, automate workflows and support internal and external customers.
Unlike other complex, difficult-to-implement, and costly products, we offer robust, affordable and easy-to-use solutions that can be quickly deployed without disruption to your business. Our flexible solutions can be implemented right out of the box or configured to match your unique IT environment and business processes. They can also be leveraged to support non-IT operations, such as human resources and facilities, allowing you to optimize your investments in licensing, maintenance, training, and support.
We’re passionate about helping people successfully manage their IT environments. Find out how we can help you by visiting: www.numarasoftware.com.
]]>Web Help Desk, a leading cross-platform help desk software solution, today announced the release of a Free Edition of it’s web-based incident management software for small business, K-12 institutions, and small government organizations. The Free Edition has no trial period or expiration date, is completely free from ads, and includes one full year of help desk software upgrades.
Key benefits of this free help desk software edition include:
For more details and a free help desk software download, visit the Web Help Desk web site (http://www.webhelpdesk.com/free-help-desk-software.html) or call +1-510-279-2251.
About Web Help Desk:
Founded in 1998, the Web Help Desk software suite is the leading cross-platform service desk management solution for help desk and customer support professionals who seek to simplify and control their increasingly complex service environments. The extensive feature set of the Web Help Desk software addresses critical IT and support areas, including: Incident and Problem Management, Asset and Desktop Management, Knowledge Management, and Approval Workflow.
]]>CA has announced the planned release of CA Service Desk Manager r12, which is designed to unify into one product what other vendors sell as separate products, including service desk, change management, configuration management database (CMDB), application dependency mapping, knowledge management, support automation, and analytics.
The planned combination of this industry-leading functionality with newly published, standardized best practices is designed to help CA customers more quickly and cost-effectively implement a holistic approach to service management. CA also plans new functionality in CA Service Desk Manager r12, including CA CMDB r12 which is being designed to better manage risk associated with changes to the IT environment.
“The complexity and demand on IT service support requires offerings beyond basic core service desk products, which today tend to require the expense and time to justify purchasing multiple add-on products. For example, while the benefits of knowledge management in reducing downtime and reducing costs through user call defection are well known, full-function knowledge management is typically a separate, extra-cost item,” said Kris Brittain, research vice president, Gartner, Inc. “This piecemeal, multi-product approach to service desks, Gartner believes, is falling out of favor as comprehensive, full-function solutions will become the industry norm.”
“Service management organizations are expanding beyond their tactical roots as trouble ticket centers to become the front office for IT, yet they are often hindered by the industry’s multi-product approach to service management tools,” said Brian Bell, senior vice president and general manager, CA Service Management.
“They need as many as seven more traditionally separate tools to come together so they can automate routine responses to incidents, identify problems and manage change to eliminate incidents, and guide decisions across IT based on how they relate to the services that drive business value. CA is the first major vendor that will provide these seven inter-related capabilities in a single product together with a holistic approach to implementation, maintenance and migration, so our customers can focus more of their time on maturing processes rather than justifying purchases of additional service desk modules.”
New functionality planned for CA Service Desk Manager r12 includes:
CA CMDB r12 is currently planned for inclusion as a standard capability of CA Service Desk Manager r12. It also will be available as a standalone product. CA CMDB r12 will provide enhancements that help reduce change and compliance risk, and improve data accuracy and business alignment.
New features planned for CA CMDB r12 include:
CA Service Desk Manager r12, a CA Enterprise IT Management solution, is being developed to help organizations drive business value from IT and effectively improve IT economics. CA solutions, such as CA Service Desk Manager r12, are designed to help lower the total cost of ownership of IT by providing faster time-to-value and reducing IT costs through better integration and automation.
For more information visit the CA Service Desk web site.
]]>Featuring new and expanded support for IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) version 3 service lifecycle best practices and extensive usability enhancements, including powerful new mobile technology, this release further demonstrates the company’s continued focus on delivering advanced functionality to its customers at an affordable price and helping service organizations deliver a world-class experience to their service customers.
“Throughout organizations of all sizes, IT managers are struggling to fully support their business’ complex needs within a constrained budget,” said David Weiss, president and CEO of Numara Software. “That’s why we’re dedicated to helping our customers implement the most practical and flexible IT Service Management solutions available, and the latest release of Numara FootPrints 9 with the new Service Catalog and Mobility solutions along with the Preventive Maintenance module is another example of this dedication.”
“I think the Numara Software approach to the IT service desk is just what mid-market and departments within larger enterprises need,” said Paul Burns, senior analyst, Enterprise Management Associates. “Numara Software is focused on providing practical and easy-to-use solutions, which is exactly what these markets appreciate. With the latest release of Numara FootPrints, the company has hit on a variety of transforming capabilities, especially the integration of their new Service Catalog with the CMDB.”
Designed for mid-sized to large organizations, Numara FootPrints is a market leader for real-world, practical IT service management, delivering unparalleled value with a highly flexible workflow platform for managing the service desk and other business processes. This new release delivers a range of enhanced and new functionality, including:
ITILv3 for the Real World
Numara FootPrints 9 offers unmatched flexibility and painless implementation whether customers are just beginning to formalize their IT processes or fully embracing ITIL v3 to better align with their business needs.
World – Class Customer Experience Aligned with the Business
Numara FootPrints 9 provides new and improved ways to help service organizations manage service delivery more effectively, including:
“The biggest benefit that we get from using Numara FootPrints 9 is improved organization and communication,” said Joshua Koch, director of technology, Woodland Joint Unified School District. “It allows us to put the end-user in the driver seat when communicating with our technology department, and better equips us to organize and prioritize our workload. The ITIL best practice framework, along with an easy-to-use web interface, made it easy to implement and customize to our specific needs.”
The practical and flexible design of Numara FootPrints delivers immediate value to customers in its ease-of-use and rapid implementation time to reach productivity, at an extremely low cost of ownership. Unlike other costly and complex products, this highly configurable and scalable solution does not require any programming, deep technical expertise or long consulting engagements.
Numara FootPrints 9 supports ITIL v3 processes and is a certified toolset that has been verified by Pink Elephant through its PinkVERIFY Program. Numara FootPrints 9 has been assessed and verified for Incident, Problem, Change, Configuration, Service Catalog and Knowledge Management, along with Request Fulfillment.
Numara FootPrints 9 is available immediately. It is offered in either an on-premise license or hosted. For more information, including a complete list of new features, please visit: www.numarasoftware.com/footprints.asp.
]]>The new integration delivers scheduled imports of asset discovery data from LANrev to the Web Help Desk back-end database and instant access to the LANrev Admin application from within the Web Help Desk browser-based interface.
Automated imports of LANrev’s reliable asset discovery data into the Web Help Desk provide support personnel with up-to-date hardware and software details for the computer identified in the service desk ticket.
If additional software license management analysis is required or software patches need to be deployed, Web Help Desk provides instant, asset-specific accessibility to the the LANrev Admin application.
Web Help Desk’s integration with LANrev Client Manager makes initiating an LANrev desktop control session a simple mouse click away. From within a Web Help Desk ticket or asset search, support professionals can instantly access all of LANrev’s features and benefits.
“Even in today’s uncertain economic climate, service desk requests, software compliance issues, and patch management are business realities that will not falter and must be addressed,” said MacsDesign VP, Terry Siddall. “However, by utilizing integrated solutions like Web Help Desk and LANrev that are intuitive, simple to deploy, and provide a heightened and measurable ROI, businesses are able to address these issues while providing demonstrable value back to the
organization.”
About MacsDesign Studio:
Founded in 1998, MacsDesign Studio LLC is a global provider of the Web Help Desk software suite, the leading cross-platform service desk management solution for help desk and customer support professionals who seek to simplify and control their increasingly complex service environments. The extensive feature set of the Web Help Desk software addresses critical IT and support areas, including: Incident and Problem Management, Asset and Desktop Management, Knowledge Management, and Approval Workflow.
For more information on the Web Help Desk software suite, visit the Web Help Desk website or call +1-510-279-2251.
About LANrev LP:
LANrev LP is the leading provider of PC and Mac lifecycle management solutions for enterprise IT environments. LANrev’s ease of deployment and powerful management tools help enterprises across the globe save time and money while increasing efficiency. LANrev is a founding member of the Enterprise Desktop Alliance and an Energy Star partner.
For more information please visit the LANrev website or call +1-214-459-0136.
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