Posts Tagged ‘IT’
The New Role of IT in Business
Saturday, April 25th, 2009In the past several years, IT-led teams have found numerous new ways to streamline business processes in order to improve operating efficiency and reduce costs. Now corporate leaders are expounding a new role for IT: enabling revenue generation for the business.
Through the use of the right performance metrics, IT capabilities can be structured to support both revenue generation and cost reduction. A flexible structure called Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) will be the basis.
What does this mean and how can it happen? There are five primary areas in which IT will become indispensable.
- Customer Relationships
- Technology will enhance the customer experience
- Technology will boost the number of dollars spent by customers
- Customer Knowledge
- Technology will enable the company to understand who their customers are
- Technology will track the needs and desires of the potential customers
- Product Development
- Technology will improve product development by decreasing time spent
- Technology will aid in the origination of new product or service ideas
- Product and Service Sales
- Technology will facilitate the launch of new products and services
- Technology will become part of the means of advertising and selling through new channels
- Partner Development
- Technology will help identify possible partnerships to enhance products or services or the delivery of products or services
- Technology will be the means of enabling those partnerships
Many companies are still structured with an IT team as totally separate from other teams such as the product development team or sales team. In the future, successful and growing companies will integrate IT staff within each business unit. And company executives will need to work closely with the IT team if revenue generation and cost cutting are to occur.
One of the biggest changes in the IT team in the future will be in the personnel. Many company executives feel it is important to have senior IT managers who have both business and IT experience. Further, they want the majority of their IT employees to have previous experience in business functions as well as IT. In turn, this could elevate the CIO to a Board position.
IT success will be measured most frequently by looking at its contribution to revenue growth. However, in today’s changing markets, another major test of IT’s success will have to do with its ability to help the company become agile in adapting to changing needs. And, as always, in order to realize profits, or greater profits, the company must measure its IT’s success through cost reduction.
Choosing IT Help Desk Software – Least Expensive vs. Most Effective
Saturday, April 18th, 2009Choosing the correct IT Help Desk Software for your company is more than choosing the least expensive IT Help Desk Software. It is even more than balancing the value of the software with its cost. In fact, obtaining the right IT Help Desk Software is a function of aligning the business objectives with the IT investment and implementation. The idea is to implement software that assists the organization in obtaining optimum performance as measured by business outcomes.
Help Desk excellence for a company focused on customer relationships means that the IT Help Desk Software must be able to partner with each unit of the company in order to deliver value and help to customers. While the customer feels it is only the help desk personnel with whom they interact, there must be a means for Help Desk agents to interact with people in all areas of the company to truly solve the issues presented by the customers.
There are lots of good Help Desk software packages available. However, finding one that fits your company’s model and goals is more important than finding one that is inexpensive. The software must fit with the staffing. It must enable the staff to field and answer the customers’ issues in the most efficient yet complete method.
Because Help Desks serve a variety of functions from one company to another and even within large corporations, the Help Desk software must have capabilities that support the functions for which it will be used. In most cases the software will support a live help desk staffed by agents who give answers and advice in real time. A well-indexed knowledge base is a key to quick and efficient support of a live help desk. In many instances there will be an expectation that the customer or other personnel within the company will access the software to attempt to answer questions or solve problems on their own, so there must be an easily understood interface.
If the main function of the IT software for your Help Desk is to generate a help ticket for a technician, the categories and questions on the help ticket must be coordinated among technicians, IT support personnel, and customers. Simply asking standard questions of name, address, and problem encountered often does not give the technician enough information. In many instances, the wrong type of technician could be sent to the customer’s location or the technician would take the wrong parts or tools. Choosing the correct questions and the best software entails in-depth discussions with technicians and former customers to better understand what kinds of questions should be asked and what type of information is critical to a good outcome for the customer.
If the IT Help Desk Software cannot be customized for your company’s needs, it probably will only serve their needs for a short time and you will be looking for new software within five years as your products and your customers evolve. Inexpensive, out-of-the-box software will serve your needs initially, but cannot be changed in the little ways you will need every few months or the bigger ways you will need in a couple of years. Therefore, effective IT Help Desk Software is far more valuable that inexpensive IT Help Desk Software.
Choosing the Best Help Desk Software
Sunday, April 12th, 2009In many of the trade shows and international conferences that I have attended, I am often asked, “What in your opinion is the best IT Help Desk Software?”
My response is always, “The best for whom, or what?” I am also often asked, “What features do I look for in the perfect IT Help Desk Software?”
Again, my response is the same.
First you have to evaluate what you are trying to accomplish. An IT Help Desk for a Fortune 500 company with 10,000 employees and a large IT department is obviously entirely different than one for an IT Help Desk that serves 150 end user customers, and a help desk of 10 agents. Those same agents most likely are also looking after the needs of 25-50 employees within the same company.
Instead of looking for IT Help Desk Software that does “everything” you could ever imagine, evaluate your needs and utilize something that fits you more appropriately. Of course, you have to consider that you’ll want something that you can grow with, but like most CRM Software packages that have evolved over the years, you will probably only use 50-60% of whatever you acquire.
Great customer service is rarely rewarded, but bad customer service pays a huge price. A great IT Help Desk should be a part of the marketing department of any great company. After all, great customer service leads to future customers (and retains the current ones).
Consider the following:
You want a package that allows you to easily:
1. Customize to your company (and customer’s) needs
2. Look up customer’s information and see current and past tickets.
3. Communicate with fellow employees as well as clients.
Also ask the following type questions during the evaluation process:
1. Was the staff attentive and easy to reach during the evaluation process?
2. Has the company in question been producing software for several years?
3. How much automation is available to assist your Help Desk Agents?
4. Is there a knowledge base or history available to allow new users to shorten their learning curve?
A great IT Help Desk is like a CAT Scan. It is supposed to find and correct problems before they get worse.
It can also create good will within any organization to feed information to other team members so that they can head off problems before they arise, or allow the members to repair problems that have taken place.
Also make sure the system has a rules engine that can automatically initiate a Customer Satisfaction Analysis Survey.
Great IT Help Desk Software contains a way to carry out Customer Satisfaction Surveys. That result can then assess the client’s perception of how well your services meet their needs. It can measure the processes and methods to give management feedback on how well you are doing as a trusted IT vendor.
Last but not least, after you have created a feature and performance matrix of your needs, test the application in a real environment for at least 30 days to insure it meets your needs.
Optimize Your IT Solutions
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009IT (Information Technology) can serve as a catalyst for business transformation. An IT system can enable employees, customers, and partners to work together to consistently deliver customer value. It should support business processes and information needs.
However, the IT system must be flexible so that it can quickly respond to changing customer needs and business challenges. This type of IT system must be designed so that various pieces can be changed without changing the overall feel and experience of interfacing with the IT. The customers, employees and partners must always feel that the interface is enhanced or simpler – or even intuitive – rather than more complex and frustrating.
This means constantly evaluation and upgrading all or part of your IT system. Because changing the entire IT system is very costly and time consuming and because there often is no single IT system that aligns perfectly with the processes and goals of a company, more and more companies are looking to implement pieces and parts of various systems. While this sounds like a good idea, it often turns into a nightmare. The various pieces and parts have differing platforms, differing interfaces, and no way to interface with each other. It may even be that the companies that sold and installed these various pieces promised they would ‘work together.’ But now you are not sure what was meant by that.
Let’s look at a common example: a customer orders a product. The order desk software logs all kinds of information about the customer. The product is shipped.
A few weeks later, the same customer calls to ask a question about operating the product. The help desk person, however, has no access to the order desk information – or the online order information – and must ask the customer much of the same information as well as critical information about the product in order to determine which product engineer should handle the call. (The customer finds this frustrating and wasteful of his time.)
The call is then transferred to the product engineer who must ask many of the same questions again because he cannot access the information from the order desk software or the help desk software. He may then have to log onto a separate computer or computer system to access information about the product to answer the question.
Is this the experience you want your customers to have? How many hours should they waste giving their name and address over and over, waiting on ‘hold’ and then repeating their explanation and question?
Yet it is difficult to build an IT system that works seamlessly from one part of the company to another, that interfaces flawlessly with the other pieces. Only when you start looking at modular IT systems can you begin to build this type of performance.
Modular IT systems allow your company to constantly evolve to respond to changing needs. They provide upgrades to your existing system. They allow you to have the savings of only changing the part that needs changing at the time it needs changing – and in the way it needs changing. If purchased to do so, they work from the same platform and interface with each other seamlessly. This gives you lower IT costs while optimizing all aspects of your IT system.
Using IT to Build Change-Embracing Culture
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009The technological information advantage is the difference between winning and losing each battle for business. In today’s tight-money environment, Information Technology (IT) leaders must know which technology enhancements are going to offer the fastest return on investment. However, the company’s IT must be able to be aligned to new business priorities efficiently while minimizing the costs and risks of change.
Innovation in IT is the way to build change-embracing cultures, to improve business processes, to increase productivity, and to make customers happier and more loyal. It is obvious that last year’s technology will not win the battle for this year’s customers and needs, yet we often think we don’t have any other options. Creating an environment in your IT department of “second-guessing is good” and “how can we change or tweak or add on to or take away from?” will help to give your IT people the freedom to create IT solutions that truly work for your company and your clients.
Executives are often afraid that changes that come about as a result of this type of thinking will be expensive or won’t work together, but often these are the very changes that are least expensive and tend to pay for themselves rapidly. Improved security and enhanced performance can be side effects of solving problems.
How much of the company’s budget should be spent on IT? Statistics show that companies that consistently spend 2.8 – 3.5% of their budget on IT reap the most benefits from their IT. Their top projects are those that increase revenue and things that have to been done (like fix problems or increase security or increase bandwidth).
Using IT to cut company costs produces a better return on investment in IT. For example, automating phone-bill analysis by collecting phone bills into a data warehouse and applying analytics can show inefficiencies in phone-plan usage and overcharges.
All executives at a company must work with the IT team to create this type of change-embracing culture. Processes must be improved. Efficiency of the system must increase through a variety of means. The business goals of the company must be clearly communicated to and understood by the IT team in order for that team to create IT that aligns with those business goals. Effective use of IT means that customer care is improved. There have to be quantifiable means of measuring the effectiveness of IT. And IT team members need to be encouraged to be innovative in their thinking through incentives and compensation.
Using IT to Build Change-Embracing Culture
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009The technological information advantage is the difference between winning and losing each battle for business. In today’s tight-money environment, Information Technology (IT) leaders must know which technology enhancements are going to offer the fastest return on investment. However, the company’s IT must be able to be aligned to new business priorities efficiently while minimizing the costs and risks of change.
Innovation in IT is the way to build change-embracing cultures, to improve business processes, to increase productivity, and to make customers happier and more loyal. It is obvious that last year’s technology will not win the battle for this year’s customers and needs, yet we often think we don’t have any other options. Creating an environment in your IT department of “second-guessing is good” and “how can we change or tweak or add on to or take away from?” will help to give your IT people the freedom to create IT solutions that truly work for your company and your clients.
Executives are often afraid that changes that come about as a result of this type of thinking will be expensive or won’t work together, but often these are the very changes that are least expensive and tend to pay for themselves rapidly. Improved security and enhanced performance can be side effects of solving problems.
How much of the company’s budget should be spent on IT? Statistics show that companies that consistently spend 2.8 – 3.5% of their budget on IT reap the most benefits from their IT. Their top projects are those that increase revenue and things that have to been done (like fix problems or increase security or increase bandwidth).
Using IT to cut company costs produces a better return on investment in IT. For example, automating phone-bill analysis by collecting phone bills into a data warehouse and applying analytics can show inefficiencies in phone-plan usage and overcharges.
All executives at a company must work with the IT team to create this type of change-embracing culture. Processes must be improved. Efficiency of the system must increase through a variety of means. The business goals of the company must be clearly communicated to and understood by the IT team in order for that team to create IT that aligns with those business goals. Effective use of IT means that customer care is improved. There have to be quantifiable means of measuring the effectiveness of IT. And IT team members need to be encouraged to be innovative in their thinking through incentives and compensation.