When today's businesses run 24/7 on fewer IT-dollars, the relentless job of supporting employees, suppliers, business partner, and customers is an organizational necessity and one of the biggest challenges facing support organizations.
Are you expanding your reach into international markets without knowing how you will provide cost-effective, quality support? If you are, you’re not alone. According to the Small Business Administration, the number of American businesses sending their goods and services overseas has tripled since 1990. About two-thirds of that boom comes from companies with fewer than 20 employees. No longe…
If you are involved with managing process automation, building automation, or security systems, you know the complexity of your IT systems can often create failures and indecision that result in downtime. And downtime can blow your production schedule, put lives at risk, and your company in financial peril. Redundancy is a time-tested method to ensure availability of PLCs, monitoring, control…
Today’s modern enterprise seeks both efficiency and productivity — constantly looking for new and effective ways to boost employee workflow. This new enterprise includes branch employees, teleworkers, and on-the-go workforces that communicate using a variety of mobile devices. But hidden somewhere in many corporate helpdesk closets are tools being used for support that may impede the effect…
More than ever, organizations require trusted, high quality data to satisfy governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) initiatives. Organizations are discovering that poor quality data has a significant impact on their ability to support business processes, comply with industry regulators, and to make accurate decisions and are raising the visibility of data quality activities within their enterpri…
It’s no surprise that the downturn in major world economies poses a threat to business growth. As Price water house Coopers revealed in its 11th Annual Global CEO Survey published in 20081, the percentage of CEOs who say that they are 'very confident' about the potential for business growth has fallen for the first time since 2002. Competition is not diminishing, however, and CEOs continue …
When it comes to software implementations, organizations large and small share the common goal of rapid deployment and return on investment. Small and mid-size businesses(“SMBs”) however, face unique issues and challenges that might not be satisfied by vendorsth at typically serve the Fortune 1000 or “Tier I” community. Such vendors may tout specialized “SMB solutions”, but many tim…
The rate of change and the amount of competition in the business world is escalating. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) need to ensure that the technology solutions they buy meet today’s business needs and are flexible enough to grow with this rapidly evolving business environment. The Cisco® Smart Business Roadmap provides a structured, planned evolution path to help organizations ta…
The CyberAngel with Wi-Trac ® ® Security Software utilizes our unique Alert..Lock..Locate technology to provide Real-Time Security and Tracking & Recovery of your computer in the event of loss or theft. The CyberAngel® with Wi-Trac® will detect unauthorized access of a protected computer and immediately protect all sensitive or confidential information on that computer, as well as locking …
Has a CRM or incident management vendor ever told you how wonderful their knowledge management “module” is? If so, beware: knowledge management must be the core of any successful CRM deployment, not an add-on module. Knowledge is power—but only when it is deeply integrated into the customer experience, the agent experience, and the enabling technology. A vendor with a knowledgebase modul…
Management 101 tells us that success in business starts with setting goals and measuring progress toward them. Service and support leaders are metrics masters: from electronic status boards to thick monthly reports, filled with charts and tables, leaders manage by the numbers. Traditionally, measuring support operations has been straightforward. Shorter hold times are better; higher abandonmen…
I nterference is a fact of life in the unlicensed bands used by wireless LANs (WLANs), and is an increasing challenge in all WLAN environments – the enterprise, outdoors (including metro-scale Wi-Fi meshes), and in the residence. As the number of unli- censed devices grows and as ever more mission-critical applications are deployed on WLANs, interference represents a challenge that must be ad…
According to Gartner Research, "The retail sector has a long-standing reputation for conservative technology adoption… However, much is changing in the retail sector, which is increasingly concerned with the capabilities of the 'big-box' retailers led by Wal-Mart. Retailers of all sizes are now realizing that operational efficiency is not enough to compete. Effective IT solutions, or the lack…
Companies have devoted significant time and resources to achieve compliance with many pieces of legislation, such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley. An important element of compliance with specific regulations is achieving a compliance framework internally. Compliance with external mandates can be more easily met by first ensuring that the network is compliant with the internal s…
As companies mature their IT operations, they know more about the performance of their networks, applications, servers, databases, and mainframe systems. However, reliable information about end-user experience remains elusive. This information is vital to gauge how well IT is adding value to the business. Obtaining reliable information about the end-user experience is just the first ste…
Client Management is the IT discipline of managing the lifecycle of end user systems (including desktops, lap- tops, and handhelds) from initial deployment, through provisioning, upgrade, and patch, to deprovisioning and decommissioning. This entails conflicting requirements from IT – which requires tight control and detailed planning – and the business – which requires flexibility and fa…
Imagine.that.you’ve.been.tasked.with.improving.the.corporate.patch.management.process..Would.you.know. what.the.ideal.patch.process.looks.like?.This.white.paper.breaks.down.the.patch.process.into.its.basic.pieces,. and.recommends.a.simple-to-use,.best.practice.approach. After.talking.with.many.IT.organizations.and.surveying.the.state-of-the-art.in.Change.Management.approaches,. we.documented…
Independent Software Vendors and Application Service Providers have become increasingly pressured by external market conditions in developing an offshore sourcing strategy, yet few succeed in designing a strategic, not just tactical cost-savings approach.
The first part of this book introduces the Office object models and the Office primary interop assemblies (PIAs). You also learn how to use Visual Studio to build automation executables, add-ins, and code behind the document by using features of Visual Studio 2008 Tools for Office 2007 (VSTO 3.0). • Chapter 1, “An Introduction to Office Programming,” introduces the Office object models a…
Virtualization is a way to abstract applications and their underlying components away from the hardware supporting them and present a logical or virtual view of these re- sources. This logical view may be strikingly different from the physical view. The goal of virtualization is usually one of the following: higher levels of performance, scalability, reliability/availability, agility, or to cre…
Many people and organizations today have a new—or renewed—interest in project management. Until the 1980s, project management primarily focused on providing schedule and resource data to top management in the military, computer, and construction industries. Today’s project management involves much more, and people in every industry and every country manage projects. Project management…