If you are to buy a HelpDesk & Asset Management software, see the following checklist before you decide on one.
Comprehensive Help Desk Functionality
A good Help Desk product can dramatically rise the productivity of the Help Desk Personnel (which in turn will rise the organisation's productivity as a whole). Computer users can be made to submit their requests by mail, phone or through the web interface provided by the product. These requests gathered centrally will be attended to by technicians (who already are automatically notified about the request). Adding memos/notes to the requests & viewing the history of Requests can help too.
Buildable Knowledge Base (KB)
Even before a complaint is registered, Users can be made to search a prebuilt KB which will result in time savings for the Help Desk Personnel. The KB will also result in increasing the first call resolutions. The Help Desk personnel should be able to add on to, edit & delete from the existing KB.
Asset Managenment
What is considered here as an organisation's Assets are typical hardware components like PCs, Printers, Scanners etc & Licensed Software like MS Office, Adobe Photoshop etc. The product should allow these assets to be well tracked & their records to be maintained - from their purchase till end-of-life. It should also allow easy software license tracking which will contribute to a significant cost saving for the organisation.
Contracts (AMCs) Management
Most hardware components in an IT organisation come under some Annual Maintenance Plan. The product you choose should allow you to create & maintain various AMCs with the various vendors. If the product reminds you days before a contract ends (say, through an auto-generated email), it will be an added advantage.
Purchasing
Your IT department is constantly in need of spendable Hardware (floppies, CDs, printer ribbons, printers, PCs etc) and software. All these needs will be typically taken care by a separate Purchase Department. Seamless tracking between the two departments is an essentiality which will result in getting the required needs on schedule & their optimal use. Also, see whether the product you choose lets you mail the Purchase Orders to Vendors & track them too.
Out-of-the-box
The product installation should go on like a breeze. Moreover, it should be put into operation with nil to minimum initial configuration & all the features should be inbuilt with no extra development effort.
User friendly UI
The product you are looking at should have a very user friendly client interface as it'll be used by all employees in your organisation. The UI should be simple & at the same time offer easy-to-use features. If the product is web enabled, it'll make things much more easier - any user can login from anywhere using just a browser.
Pricing & Licensing
Most Help Desk products in the market are prohibitively costly with many hidden costs associated with them. Coupled with this, the products' licensing models can be tedious to understand & implement. Make sure the product you choose offers affordable pricing with an easy licensing model.
AdventNet's ServiceDesk Plus offers to solve all the above & has much more to offer. The product is available at a very affordable price starting from $495 & there's a Free Edition too that can manage 25 Workstations. For further information, mail to sales@adventnet.com or visit http://www.servicedeskplus.com
Natarajan Aravind
Market Analyst
AdventNet,Inc.
http://www.servicedeskplus.com
Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is marketed for mid-size companies... Read More
Microsoft Great Plains is main Microsoft Business Solutions accounting package... Read More
Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has I'd say end user... Read More
Microsoft Business Solutions is now in process of creating so... Read More
Before September 1995, Microsoft Windows was an MS-DOS program. DOS... Read More
Since its release in 1987, QuarkXpress had made an immediate... Read More
Disclaimer: All the thoughts expressed are my views only! Your... Read More
Here is some free software tools to help you build... Read More
If you company is small or mid-size special products or... Read More
Ok... Where to start?Well, I guess I will start at... Read More
If you are software developer or database administrator - we... Read More
CD and DVD replication is a process that works by... Read More
It's no secret that software companies operate in a very... Read More
When you own a small business, time is money. And... Read More
Security flaws have long plagued Internet Explorer (IE), the market-dominating... Read More
This article will not attempt to advocate the use of... Read More
This article is the third of a series of articles... Read More
If you feel intimidated when someone tries to teach you... Read More
XML parser is a software module to read documents and... Read More
TikiWiki is open source software - it is written in... Read More
Remember old good days when your company probably had Great... Read More
Background: For many organizations like ours, the interim target of... Read More
Although we don't know whether Microsoft ever envisioned such a... Read More
Microsoft Business Solutions offers several ERP applications: Great Plains, Navision,... Read More
Microsoft CRM was designed to be easily customizable. Microsoft CRM... Read More
pet-friendly home cleaners Winnetka ...IBM Lotus Domino or Microsoft Exchange?The severe competition continues for... Read More
If you are in the market for new staffing software,... Read More
Music downloads are off the charts! We're listening to digital... Read More
With so many Microsoft Windows related viruses, errors, and other... Read More
Creating a new markup language.Introduction.General Reuse Markup Langauge, or GRML,... Read More
For a windows user like me, just can watch with... Read More
IntroductionPHP can be used for a lot of different things,... Read More
(1) Avoid using the same variable again and again for... Read More
For those who still don't know, Microsoft Publisher helps computer... Read More
The first thing that you will notice about Linux Red... Read More
What is RAID RECOVERY?RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive... Read More
Your computer cost you from hundreds to thousands of dollars,... Read More
Shareware is software that you can try before you buy;... Read More
GroupwareEfforts are continually made to manage the unavoidable ad hoc... Read More
Pirated software is on the increase and now accounts for... Read More
Microsoft Business Solutions Navision serves both European and American megamarkets.... Read More
Here is some free software tools to help you build... Read More
In the Clinton era the status quo was simple: you... Read More
Microsoft Great Plains serves majority of US based horizontal and... Read More
Now that spyware is the single most dangerous threat to... Read More
Customer Relationship Management, abbreviated "CRM," is the term for a... Read More
At the end of XX century, in the late 1990th... Read More
MS CRM is very close to document workflow automation, including... Read More
If you are in a business that passes documents around... Read More
Introduction to C++Why Learn C++?C++ may at first seem like... Read More
Software |