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Vector develops software for IT Asset, Service and Security Management. In these areas, as just about any area of the industry, vendor hype can create unrealistic expectations, leading to customer disappointment. The mission of this blog is to act as a counter to vendor hype, and use our staff's contact with our customers to help us review, realistically, the issues that CTOs, CIOs and their long-suffering staff face every day. Please take a feed from our Blog to keep in touch, and let us have your input too.
Help Desk access options for your users: any favorites?
A straw poll last week of the account managers for our service management , IT helpdesk and business issue tracking offerings revealed some interesting information on how the people they talk to each provide access for their IT user population to their organization’s help desk. The methods [...]
Software Asset Management: fundamentals for compliance
Many organizations are grappling with the twin problems of adequately identifying the software they have installed, and correctly interpreting the usage entitlements defined in the pages and pages of software licenses they hold. New laptops and netbooks will often come pre-loaded with suites of utilities – some of them from [...]
IT Help Desk: focussed on IT or Help?
Ever since the mouse was invented, our industry has circulated jokes about users and mice, or users complaining about blank screens when the office cleaner unplugged their monitor to plug in the floor cleaner. It’s convenient to have the dumb user image to fall back on. Everything about [...]
Software License Management for Compliance
Organizations which have successfully tackled the challenges of accurate software inventory often turn their attentions to getting to grips with the wide range of license documents they hold. For compliance, the fundamental question at any point in time is – “Have we got enough documented entitlement to cover the number of [...]
Helpdesk Software – cornerstone of effective customer support
Organizations’ reputations can be damaged more by their customer support performance than by problems with the performance of their products and services. We all know what it’s like to wrestle with an automated call routing system which after endless selections from menus of choices doesn’t in the end [...]
HelpDesk software and service level agreements (SLAs).
The concept of service level agreements (SLAs) has received a lot of attention over the last decade. In part this was fuelled by the need to monitor the performance of IT service providers in outsourcing deals. When spending thousands, millions or billions of dollars to someone else to manage [...]
I don’t often use this blog to talk about something specific our own solutions, but we’ve just made a point release that could be one of the most significant for a long time, and there are some important issues behind that belief.
IT asset management: the case for agent-based methods
For a while now we have faced [...]
IT Helpdesk software and first call resolution
First call resolution is a key target for an IT help desk. Productivity is maximized for both the end-user and for the support team. Personal skills and support team attitudes play a big part in the course of an issue’s resolution, but skill levels vary and every team will [...]
Many of our customers are becoming more pro-active in the management of their software assets, driven by the twin concerns of shelf-ware and escalating vendor audit activity. No two organizations take precisely the same approach to the topic. Those just emerging from an expensive audit cycle are looking primarily to ensure that a repeat event will not be so [...]
‘Software Development Times’ is not a journal I normally read, but I was fortunate to be alerted to this article which provides more useful contribution to the debate and increasing awareness of the pressures for licensing options from software vendors. The article contains some useful information from IDC’s Amy Konary (follow her on Twitter at @mizkonary) about specific instances of the financial impact for organizations moving [...]
