IT Remote Management » Performance

Workforce Analysis and Human Performance Technology Company, Harkcon, Inc., to Assist the U.S. Coast Guard in Meeting …

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 07:21:43 +0000

Helping O.C. Small Businesses Succeed with Big Business Management Tools
Fullerton CPA Firm Introduces Dashboard Reporting with CPA Review Services

Now, an e-shirt to keep a tab on your performance during workout

Sat, 18 Sep 2010 08:48:39 +0000

Great Lakes nuke shipment plan stirs accident fear
Environmentalists and some local government officials are protesting a Canadian power company’s proposal to haul 16 scrapped generators with radioactive components across three of the Great Lakes on their way to a recycling plant in Sweden. Bruce Power Inc.,… Great Lakes – Canada – Sweden – Science and Environment – Bruce Power

Math academies + support = change in East Bay student performance

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:29:45 +0000

Support for Maori language increasing
Support among non-Maori for people speaking the language has increased significantly over the last decade,.

ASE IT Networks Assures Peak Performance of Managed Cloud Services

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:41:39 +0000

WellPoint Named One of the Best Employers for Healthy Lifestyles by National Business Group on Health
WellPoint Among 66 Employers Across the Nation Recognized for Promoting Healthy Workplaces read more

Kingston Technology Releases World’s First, Fastest Low-Voltage, Ultra-Low Voltage Performance Memory

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:31:12 +0000

Technology gives charities new way to reach out
Launched only two months ago, Palo Alto’s CauseWorld is already raising about $200,000 per month for various community organizations with a mix of mobile phone applications, geo-location technology and social media. Meanwhile, BetterWorldBooks uses Facebook…

BPM Partners BudgetLock Plus Eliminates Budget Overruns and Business Performance Management Project Surprises

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 04:38:04 +0000

CA Buys Oblicore in Service-Level Push
The move will help CA customers optimize service levels to meet business expectations, while providing new cloud management tools.

How to Increase IT Help Desk Customer Satisfaction and IT Help Desk Performance

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:03:40 +0000

The problems IT Help Desk customers often encounter

If your company or organization has an in-house or outsourced IT Help Desk, chances are that some of your Help Desk customers are dissatisfied with the service they are receiving. Some of the many possible causes of dissatisfaction with IT Help Desks include:

1. Long wait times when calling the Help Desk or after submitting a service request by e-mail or using a Help Desk Web portal or ticket system

2. CSRs that do not understand their customers’ problems

3. Rude CSRs

4. Closing IT incident tickets before the problem is resolved

5. Lack of follow-up by IT Help Desk CSRs

6. IT customers (IT users) having to deal with recurring problems for which the cause never gets addressed and/or eliminated

7. IT Help Desk CSRs that are not adequately trained and that lack knowledge required to solve problems

8. IT customers having to explain their question or problem to multiple CSRs and IT technicians

9. IT customers having to wait a long time for Help Desk problem resolution, hardware repairs, software installation, and other IT support provided at their desk or by phone/e-mail

10. IT Help Desks not being staffed when customers need support (nights, weekends)

11. IT Help Desks having CSRs with difficulty communicating with IT customers in English (e. g. IT Help Desks often outsourced in other countries)

Assessing IT Customer Satisfaction and IT Performance

The best way to assess IT Help Desk customer satisfaction and IT Help Desk performance is to conduct an IT customer satisfaction survey. An IT customer survey gathers IT customer / IT user perceptions, experiences and suggestions about IT Help Desk performance, along with the performance of other IT services. The collective information and insight provided by IT customers provides IT Help Desk and other IT managers with the ammunition they need to make changes to increase service levels and customer satisfaction.

In a well designed IT survey, IT customers indicate their satisfaction level with the in-house or outsourced IT Help Desk and with the other IT support services including Desk Side Support, Application Support, Network Support and any other IT services. IT customers also include comments and suggestions related to the specific issues included in the survey questions.

The IT survey should include questions about IT CSR knowledge, problem handling and resolution effectiveness, CSR courtesy and professionalism, timeliness in actually contacting the Help Desk, timeliness in getting problems resolved, ability of Help Desk CSRs to understand the customer’s problem, follow-up by CSRs and other pertinent questions.

To achieve the best results, IT survey responses should be anonymous. IT customers are more likely to respond to IT surveys and to provide honest feedback when they know their responses are anonymous, eliminating any chance of retribution from IT staff if negative ratings and comments are given.

Most organizations that conduct IT Help Desk surveys conduct the surveys annually or semi-annually, using the same questions in every survey. Some organizations do a great job of taking action based on the survey results, while other organizations take minimal action. When we conduct IT Help Desk surveys for our customer companies and other types of organizations, we provide them with trend reports that track progress in addressing problem areas and opportunities needing improvement. Help Desk managers receive survey data that identifies areas of strength and weakness, where improvements have been made since previous surveys, and where Help Desk customer satisfaction levels have decreased.

Most IT Help Desk customers respond to surveys with the expectation that their feedback will be taken into consideration and acted upon. When IT Help Desk managers take action on survey results and Help Desk performance and service levels are visibly improved, IT customers are more likely to respond to future surveys.

Following are some important issues to consider when designing and conducting IT Help Desk surveys:

1. Asking the right questions and knowing how to effectively word the questions.

2. Making the survey responses anonymous. IT Help Desk customers are more likely to respond to an IT survey and to provide honest answers when an outside company conducts the survey and they are comfortable that their responses will be anonymous.

3. Having IT Help Desk customers identify their department, site location and other pertinent demographic information, and generating survey reports for each demographic criterion.

4. Providing the opportunity to include comments and suggestions along with ratings.

5. Promoting participation in the survey.

6. Sharing the survey results with IT Help Desk staff and with IT Help Desk customers.

7. Taking action based on the survey results.

8. Conducting the survey periodically (e. g. annually, semi-annually or quarterly) and tracking progress in IT Help Desk customer satisfaction and service levels, and IT Help Desk performance.

Taking action to increase IT Help Desk Customer satisfaction and IT Help Desk performance

Some of the actions that CTOs, CIOs, IT Help Desk managers and other IT managers can take to increase Help Desk service levels and customer satisfaction include:

1. Providing training and mentoring for IT Help Desk CSRs in how to handle customer calls, problem handling and resolution, acting professionally, technology knowledge, IT customer follow-up and other pertinent issues.

2. Identifying and managing IT Help Desk customer expectations for service.

3. Establishing and communicating SLAs (service level agreements or standards) to Help Desk CSRs and IT Help Desk customers.

4. Ensuring that Help Desk CSR hiring practices are effective in hiring the right people to staff the IT Help Desk.

5. Staffing and scheduling the Help Desk to provide consistently high levels of customer service based on IT customer demand for service.

6. Identifying and eliminating recurring technology problems.

7. Streamlining the IT environment.

8. Providing effective IT Desk Side and Application support.

9. Having an effective IT Help Desk ticket tracking system, managing ticket ageing to keep the backlog minimal, and ensuring that tickets are not closed prematurely, before problems are resolved completely and effectively.

10. Sharing the survey results with IT Help Desk staff and other IT employees, enabling them to understand how IT customers perceive the effectiveness of IT Help Desk and other IT functions.

11. Creating an action plan to address the issues and opportunities identified by the IT survey and tracking implementation of actions/changes made to increase IT customer satisfaction and service levels.

Benefits of IT Help Desk Surveys

Conducting IT Help Desk and other IT customer satisfaction surveys / IT user satisfaction surveys is well worth the effort. When designed and executed well, with effective analysis of the survey data and timely action taken on opportunities, IT survey benefits include:

1. Significant increases in IT Help Desk customer satisfaction

2. Significant increases in IT Help Desk service levels

3. Improvements in performance of the IT Help Desk and other IT functions

4. Possible reductions in the cost of delivering Help Desk and other IT services as they become more efficient and recurring problems are significantly reduced or eliminated

5. Increased service levels for your company’s/organization’s external customers as employees are able to perform their job more effectively as a result of improved IT Help Desk performance

6. Reduced pressure on CTOs, CIOs, IT Help Desk and other IT managers as IT customer satisfaction increases

Survey information and tips are presented at http://www. Quantisoft. com

Info. about IT Help Desk Surveys and other IT Customer Satisfaction Surveys http://www. quantisoft. com/Industries/IT. htm

Howard Deutsch is CEO of Quantisoft, a full service survey company. Quantisoft conducts IT customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction/engagement, customer opinion/satisfaction, sales force opinion, business risk assessment, ethics & compliance risk culture and other types of surveys. Contact Howard Deutsch at (609) 409-9945 or hdeutsch@quantisoftdotcom.

Network Management Systems (NMSs) : Ensuring Business Performance and Continuity

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:53:38 +0000

Networking is now the main and unavoidable solution to most modern information technology companies, generating services to the whole world. Management of information is the most important thing to be kept in mind. Large amount of data needs to be managed and stored and retrieved as and when needed. Data can be stored centrally or distributed over the component machines. So the various components need to communicate among them. So, a network has to be established among all the components. First and foremost importance is data availability. Network management system has to be done for fast data retrieval. And here comes in the thought of network management system.

Planning for a network management system requires that a number of network management tasks be folded in a single software solution. The network management system should automate the processes of expense management auditing, asset lifecycle management, inventory deployment tracking, cost allocation and invoice processing.

Network management system means different things to different people. In some cases, it involves a solitary network consultant monitoring network activity with an outdated protocol analyzer. In other cases, network management involves a distributed database, auto polling of network devices and high-end workstations generating real-time graphical views of network topology changes and traffic. In general, network management is a service that employs a variety of tools, applications, and devices to assist human network managers in monitoring and maintaining networks.

A number of network management systems are capable of managing multiple geographically distributed sites. It is quite natural that units of an organization be situated quite a far off distance geographically, data sharing and retrieval becomes hard. This is accomplished by exchanging management data between management consoles at remote sites with a management station at the main site. The main advantage of a distributed architecture is that it reduces management traffic, thus, providing a more effective usage of bandwidth. A distributed architecture also allows personnel to locally manage their networks from remote sites with systems.

A typical enterprise is comprised of different network elements. However, each device normally requires compatible element for network management systems in order to effectively manage the network elements. A recent enhancement to management platforms is the ability to remotely manage network elements using a web interface. This type of network management systems is an enhancement which eliminates the need for special client software on individual user stations to access a management platform. The data collected by different systems is stored in separate databases, creating administration overhead for users. Companies now follow the three tier architecture to manage large sets of data. Such situations have initiated the companies to adopt standards such as Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) to facilitate the exchange of management data between management platforms and element management systems. CORBA specifies a system that provides interoperability between objects in a heterogeneous, distributed environment and in a manner that is transparent to the programmer. Its design is based on the Object Management Group (OMG) object model. With organizations adopting standards in network management system development, users can expect interoperability and cost savings in deploying and managing the infrastructure.

Most network management systems architectures use the same basic structure and set of relationships. Computer systems and other network devices run software that enables them to send alerts when they recognize problems when one or more user-determined thresholds are exceeded. Upon receiving these alerts, management entities are programmed to react by executing one, several, or a group of actions, including operator notification, event logging, system shutdown, and automatic attempts at system repair.

Management entities also can poll end stations to check the values of certain variables. Polling can be automatic or user-initiated, but agents in the managed devices respond to all polls. Agents are software modules that first compile information about the managed devices in which they reside, then store this information in a management database, and finally provide it (proactively or reactively) to management entities within network management systems (NMSs) via a network management protocol. Well-known network management protocols include the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP). Management proxies are entities that provide management information on behalf of other entities.

John Gald is an experienced IT professional with specialized knowledge in the fields of network management system, web development and database management. He is associated with IT giants providing his management advice for planning and execution of their services.