SAManage IT Management Blog

At SAManage, our online IT management solutions have a proven track record of success. Each and every day, companies across all industries rely on our tools to dramatically improve the way they track and maintain their technology systems.

What can our IT management software do for you?

Greater IT Inventory Visibility

Do you know what assets you have? Where they are? Who’s using them? How they are configured? Chances are, the answer is no. With SAManage, IT audits are faster and easier than ever before. So, you’ll know exactly what PCs, servers, printers, software packages, and other components exist across your entire business – as well as all their characteristics and properties.

Enhanced Change Management

Today’s business environments are very dynamic, and technology infrastructures must be constantly modified and expanded in order to keep pace. But, tracking those changes can be a harrowing task, particularly if inventory is logged and managed manually. SAManage automatically captures changes to assets in your environment. With our IT management tools, your IT team will be automatically notified when new software is installed, when upgrades or patches are applied, when an asset changes hands, etc.

Improved Software License Management

Unfortunately, most organizations today use Excel spreadsheets to manage how purchased software licenses are allocated. But, this approach leaves much room for error. For example, as new licenses are bought – from countless different vendors – mistakes and discrepancies are bound to find their way into those spreadsheets, putting companies at risk of fines and penalties for non-compliance. Our software license management functionality provides end-to-end monitoring of all related activities. Purchased contracts and associated documentation can be captured and stored, allocated licenses can be tracked, and changes to how those licenses are distributed and used can be monitored in real-time. So, you’ll always be in compliance with the terms of your vendor contracts.

Faster Problem Identification and Resolution

Many common issues in your technology environment can drain the productivity of both your IT staff, and your end users. But, without the right solutions in place, these problems can be hard to detect – until it is too late! Is someone using unlicensed software? Has an end user downloaded a game or file-sharing program that introduces new threats to your infrastructure? Comprehensive risk detection capabilities are available within the SAManage system. You’ll know what problems require your immediate attention, so they can be corrected as promptly as possible.

Better Service Delivery

Once you’ve gained greater control over the assets in your network, you can focus on providing improved service to those who use them. Our powerful help desk system offers cradle-to-grave tracking of all tickets, automating critical processes such as routing, collaboration, and communication. So, all problems are handled in the most efficient manner. And, because these features are fully integrated with our IT asset management solution, repairs and other important information are dynamically incorporated into each asset’s history.

SaaS = lower Costs

SAManage solutions are delivered via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.  Which means, no hardware and software components are required at your side, and you no longer have to upgrade, maintain or patch yet another IT system – we take care of all that for you. Simply sign up for our service, and get started immediately – without the need for a long, complex, and costly implementation.  In addition to accelerating deployment and shortening the time-to-value, our SaaS approach brings ongoing product enhancements and new features, and you can benefit from them immediately.

Visit our Web site to learn more about the many benefits of our SaaS IT management solution, and how it can help you optimize the value of your IT assets, and improve the productivity of related IT operations.

SaaS-based IT Management Software

Discover how SaaS IT Management software can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and know exactly what you have.
Sign up for a free trial of SAManage IT Management service.

For most companies, IT service management is critical to keeping the systems that employees and/or customers rely on performing at peak levels at all times.  Therefore, ensuring that related IT service desk processes are efficient – for example, that issues are addressed and resolved as promptly as possible – is of the utmost importance.

The SAManage SaaS-based IT management system offers a variety of features designed to enhance IT service desk operations, and to help IT service management teams to do their jobs better.  These capabilities allow staff members to interact directly with the end users who are reporting problems or requesting services provided by the IT team, and automates the execution and tracking of key tasks. This, in turn, offers significant benefits, including:

• Improved communication and collaboration between IT professionals and those they support
• Accelerated issue handling and resolution and streamlines IT support processes
• Increased productivity of IT service desk workers and other stakeholders throughout the company
• Reduced support costs

How does SAManage enhance IT service management?

SAManage IT service management capabilities provides a facility that automates the routing of certain types of support incidents to specific individuals.  The requester selects a ticket type when they are creating a new request (note: these ticket types are fully customizable).  This lets the system know who the request should be assigned and distributed to.  For example, a technical problem would be immediately sent to a technician working the IT service desk, while a request for new software would be routed to someone in purchasing.  This helps speed up response times by ensuring that the right people are designated to handle each and every ticket.

Additionally, businesses can set up multiple email drop boxes – one for each ticket type.  So, for example, acquisition requests would be sent to acquisitions@acme.com and forwarded to the acquisition drop box.  New acquisition requests would automaticly get assigned to members of the procurement department who could then respond to each accordingly.  Or, requests for software or hardware installations would be sent to installations@acme.com, a support drop box that might be overseen by certain IT service management professionals.

But, most importantly, SAManage provides a direct line of communication between those who open tickets, and those who handle them.  When a ticket is created and routed, the IT professional receives an email alerting them of the new issue.  They can then simply reply to that email to ask questions, or gather more information from the end user.  Responses to those questions can also be sent via email.

With SAManage, organizations can dramatically improve service to end users by streamlining and enhancing their most vital IT service management processes – making issue handling and resolution faster and more effective than ever before. Visit our Website to learn more about our solutions for IT service management, as well as our powerful SaaS IT asset management tools.

Online IT Management and Help Desk Software

Discover how on-demand IT Asset Management and Help Desk software from SAManage can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and improve your service levels.
Sign up for a free trial of SAManage.

samanage-helpdesk-iphone

The need for mobile help desk software functionality is becoming increasingly urgent, and SAManage can empower your help desk technicians to be more productive and efficient – even when they’re on the road.

Over the past several years, the mobile workforce has expanded to include everyone from executives to IT teams.  Today’s IT support professionals now travel more frequently, or are based out of satellite offices, to best support the needs of the end user base.  But in order to ensure that they can always rapidly handle service requests and stay on top of support issues, no matter where they are, they need automated help desk tools that are fully portable.

Web-Based Mobile Help Desk

SAManage offers a wide array of mobile help desk capabilities, allowing IT support professionals to easily and efficiently receive, respond to, and track tickets via Blackberries, iPhones, and other popular mobile appliances.  With powerful, yet convenient features, companies can create a true mobile help desk by allowing team members at remote or off-site locations to use any mobile device to:

• Receive immediate notification through email alerts when new support requests are created
• Correspond and collaborate with users about open or pending service requests
• Request additional information from users, to clarify issues and facilitate faster resolutions
• Review issues in progress and retrieve asset configuration or history of changes

Activating Email Notifications

Activating the mobile help desk capabilities within SAManage is quick and easy.  Simply enable email access on your mobile device, using the address already linked to your SAManage account, to get email notifications when new help desk tickets are assigned to you or when a new reply to a ticket was received.  Or, if you’d like to create a unique email ID specifically for your mobile device, you’ll just need to make sure that you re-set the default email assignee in SAManage to the new email address.

Use Your Phone’s Web Browser

Additionally, you can use your phone’s Web browser to utilize the SAManage IT management service by navigating to https://app.samanage.com.  Login to your account to access your help desk.  This allows you to not only leverage the help desk capabilities, but to access other areas of the SAManage service, such as computer and software inventory, the contracts repository, and detected risks.

Visit our Web site to learn more about our mobile help desk features, as well as our other SaaS IT management solutions.

SaaS-based IT Management Software

Discover how SaaS IT Management software can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and know exactly what you have.
Sign up for a free trial of SAManage IT Management service.

SaaS is rapidly disrupting an area of the enterprise software business that is frequently overlooked – the customer advisory board.  A customer advisory board is made up of an ISVs best customers, who help review future product roadmaps and provide valuable feedback and input on planned new features and enhancements.

Why the Traditional Customer Advisory Board (CAB) is Broken

Having spend a portion of my professional career working in large enterprise software companies, I have seen, firsthand, that the customer advisory board is in many ways broken. While intentions are good and the concept of the CAB itself is useful, there are many key issues:

1. Forgot Bob? - We all have budget restrictions, so when you are planning to fly customers in and wine and dine them, you can only afford to invite a very limited number. You would likely choose your VIP customers, leaving “little Bob” out, and taking away his opportunity to participate and influence the future of your product.
2. Is it the right Bob? - CAB meetings are a nice little perk (especially when held in warm and sunny places), so you’ll often find that company management, instead of the user that has day-to-day experience with your product, will attend. Yet, a CAB can only be productive when attendees can provide real insight and feedback on your product, something that those who don’t use it frequently are unable to do.
3. Infrequency- Most companies hold CABs on an annual basis, while others host regional meetings multiple times a year. Neither approach is a methodical, frequent process that is built into the organization’s DNA. To make CABs productive they have to be an ongoing process that both sides are committing to.
4. Long delivery cycles - Perhaps one of your customers came up with a really great idea that you want to incorporate into your product plans. A traditional enterprise software vendor would go back to the development center and make it a priority in the release after the next (the next release is already closed for changes).  This means that, in many cases, the customer won’t see that great new functionality for at least a couple of years, which might make it obsolete altogether.

SaaS and the Continuous Customer Advisory Board

SaaS brings the customer and the software vendor closer together, and shortens the feedback loop. SaaS vendors can (and should) always provide an effective way for customers to provide feedback and submit ideas, and reach out to customers to discuss their needs. SaaS providers can facilitate the continuous customer advisory board through:

1. Online communities - SaaS users can participate in the vendor’s online community and discuss or vote on new ideas and features. At SAManage we use UserVoice to collaborate this way with our entire user community. All customers, regardless of their size, get the opportunity to participate in the discussion, cast their vote, and influence future product features.
2. Talking to the right Bob – SaaS vendors can group their users based on how they interact with and use the service. They can easily tell if the user is a “power user”, and how frequently he/she is accessing certain features and areas of the service. That gives the SaaS vendor an opportunity to reach out to and establish a discussion with its power users – a great way to gather feedback from the right bob.
3. Continuous communication - CAB can be ingrained in the DNA of SaaS companies. For example, when we release a new feature, we monitor how users leverage and utilize it, and reach out to them for feedback. Its a great way to learn how we can continue to improve our product capabilities.
4. Agility - SaaS companies that utilize agile product development methodologies can deliver new features, or incorporate user feedback much faster. This agility allows us to change priorities, quickly modifying a feature we just released to incorporate customer feedback, whenever needed. It takes just a few months, not years, to enhance our solution based on user requests and continuously meet customer needs.

Learn more about SAManage SaaS IT management service….

More and more businesses are choosing Salesforce.com as their software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform.  In fact, over 63,000 customers currently use the various hosted applications that Salesforce.com offers.  Now, these companies can maximize their investment in cloud computing, while enhancing the way they track their IT inventory, by organizing and managing their assets from directly within their Salesforce.com account.

Our IT asset management system seamlessly integrates with the Salesforce.com environment.  This allows organizations to incorporate data directly from SAManage into Salesforce.com, providing them with an efficient way to:

• Review the configuration, location, usage details, and repair histories of PCs, printers, servers, and other assets.
• Immediately track changes such as upgrades or re-assignments.  All modifications to assets in inventory are automatically captured in real-time, and uploaded into Salesforce.com.
• Link assets to support requests, with asset-to-cases lifecycle tracking capabilities that expedite issue resolution.

With SAManage IT asset management for Salesforce.com, inventory and configuration data is dynamically collected and imported into the Salesforce.com application.  So, companies have complete, unhindered visibility into their entire IT infrastructure.  IT professionals can easily view, analyze, and update critical asset inventory information at any time, right from within the familiar Salesforce.com interface.

As a result, Salesforce.com customers can accelerate the troubleshooting and resolution of support cases, minimizing user downtime and eliminating business disruptions, while improving the efficiency of IT support teams and optimizing the performance and value of vital technology investments.

Visit our Web site to learn more about SAManage, and how our powerful SaaS IT management software can provide dramatic benefits for Salesforce.com users.

Online IT Management and Help Desk Software

Discover how on-demand IT Asset Management and Help Desk software from SAManage can help you gain instant visibility into your assets and improve your service levels.
Sign up for a free trial of SAManage.

While technology solutions delivered via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model are beneficial to companies of all sizes, it is the small to mid sized businesses (SMBs) who are likely to derive the greatest advantages.  The SaaS approach provides companies in the mid-market with an affordable way to leverage the same kind of powerful enterprise software solutions that larger companies use for many years, and at a fraction of the cost.

Yankee Group claims that the SaaS strategy is growing in popularity among SMBs, and will continue to do so, as more and more of them choose on-demand enterprise software tools. In fact, the analyst firm’s research shows that 60 percent of small and mid-sized organizations believe that enterprise software delivered via SaaS can help them reduce expenses and increase efficiency.

Why does on-demand make it easier for SMBs to acquire enterprise software?

• No need to buy or install expensive infrastructure – all the hardware and software required to operate the enterprise software tool is already up and running at the service provider’s site.
• No upfront investment – use of the enterprise software application is rented so costs spread over affordable installments.
• Minimal burden on IT staff – since subscription fees include upgrades and ongoing administration, smaller firms don’t need to devote their already limited technical resources to maintaining the enterprise software package.
• Reduce technology risk – SaaS delivered solutions helps reduce the risk of deploying a new technology, and helps eliminate shelfware, a term used to describe software that was purchased but never put to use.
• Eliminate the upgrade cycle – traditional software vendors want you to upgrade to the newer release of their products (guess why?), which means you have to test the new version, verify its working properly in your infrastructure, and roll it across your company, somethings with very little value to the organization. With SaaS, there are no more upgrades. When new functionality becomes available, you simply configure it and put it to use. Don’t need that functionality – no problem. This approach lets you maximize the value of technology to your company.

The SaaS approach has made all types of solutions more accessible to SMBs, including enterprise IT management software.  With enterprise IT management software, companies can streamline and automate the logging, tracking, and administration of all technology assets owned and used by the company.

For years, larger companies have been reaping the benefits of enterprise IT management software, using it to boost the performance and value of their critical technology systems and infrastructure and optimize their IT investments.  Now with SaaS, smaller and mid-sized companies can easily implement IT asset management processes, facilitating better service level with integrated help desk software and much more.

Visit our web site to learn more about the benefits that SaaS offers to SMBs, and how our powerful on-demand enterprise IT management software can help smaller companies to enhance the value of their technology assets throughout their entire lifecycle.

SaaS vs. Legacy IT Management tools

This paper discuss how SaaS IT Management tools provides more value and deliver better ROI and TCO when compared with legacy on-premise software. Download our SaaS vs. Legacy IT Management tools white paper.