Itil Availability Management

One of the most popular methods for binding is with plastic comb binding. Many companies and small businesses use comb binding for their needs, whether it be for a cookbook, a manual or whatever type of paper that needed to be bound. It is a great method to use for most all binding needs, and will provide you with long lasting durability you can rely on.

You can chose from different sizes of the documents you wish to bind. If your book is large or small, think or thick, you can use comb binding to combine the documents.You will also enjoy the availability of color choices you will have when choosing your plastic spines. The supplies and the comb binding machines are both affordable, so affordable in fact that most people can have one available in their home office if the need is high enough. Small offices will not go broke buying this equipment, in fact, it may cost much less to do the binding yourself as opposed to hiring it out. There are many manufactures that make comb binders, so you will have a great selection to choose from.

If your budget is limited, you will easily find a machine that will serve your needs and keep your piggy bank full. You can choose to either do the binding with an electric or manual machine. Choosing electric will cost you more, but save you more time by doing most of the work for you. The only supplies you will need to have on hand are your book spine, your machine, your cover papers, and your internal sheets, and you are ready to bind them together, the machine will be simple to use, and most can figure it out with a simple read of the provided instructions. After binding with your plastic spine, you will find that you love the look the machine will give you. You pages will easily turn and have a professional appearance for everyone to see.

You will love the ease and convenience of using a comb-binding machine. The ability to do it in your home or office will be a luxury that will not break the bank thanks to the low prices of these great machines. You will find it is easier to complete the work in the office that to keep paying someone to do it for you. The convenience of having it done at the moment you want it done will also be a great reason to add one to your home or office today!

When investing in the right print solution for your office make sure you know what parts will be needed, where to get them from and how long they will take to get. The parts that are needed to replace broken parts in your printer if that time comes and the parts that will need to be replaced when preventative maintenance comes around.

Most replacements you will hear of will be IUs (Imaging Units), Transfer Belts, Fusers & Rollers. If you are thinking that I have forgotten about toner, developer and drums you are right, but for a good reason. These are classed as consumables and in most cases are covered under a maintenance agreement, we will discuss this in more detail in another article.

I am sure you have either yourself, or someone you know, been in a position where their office printer or copier had broken down out of the blue, called the service line of the servicing company, waited for the technician to arrive, only to diagnose the problem and not have the parts on hand for it. Sound familiar? If it sounds too familiar perhaps you need to look at receiving your service elsewhere or going in to business with another vendor.

Let’s face it, copier & printers do jam, they do break down and they do need service & if anyone tells you otherwise they need to watch what they say because if I can go of any of my previous experiences with print solution salespeople who have overstated certain performance features and under delivered are quickly uncovered & generally find themselves working in another industry and profession quicker than they would have hoped.

There is a reason for preventative maintenance on your MFDs and printers, and it is a very important one. Just like cars, and I do love using them as an analogy for print solutions, you need to maintain them. Why? So they last longer and to reduce the frequency of break-downs, or in our terms down-time. So just like the Manufacturer’s book that sits in the glove box of your car, telling you at what intervals you need to have your car service, and what parts need to be replace, so is a book sitting in the office of the Service Manager in the company that you use to service your equipment. The difference is though that the mechanic will come to you, and I do touch on this in more detail throughout this book. Remembering that certain parts need to be replaced at certain intervals it is important to know that your service company will plan to have the required parts readily available for when your print solution requires preventative maintenance, not afterwards, for this defeats the purpose. Please note, if you find a technician performs preventative maintenance for you, and you notice that no parts were replaced, make sure to ask them what they did. It is very unlikely for you to receive preventative maintenance without having to replace any parts, and you are not just paying for a clean or for a tricky technician to extend the life of the current parts in your printer.

Keeping preventative maintenance & emergency maintenance in mind we must concentrate on ensuring that the company we choose to do business with has access to the parts specific for your solution throughout the agreed term of business that you choose. In Australia, companies supplying print solutions, such as copiers & printers, only have to keep parts in stock for seven years so you will never see a lease, rental or maintenance agreement exceeding or guaranteeing supplies past seven years.

Some important notes to make about supplies is the availability of them locally. By locally we talk about in Australia, in your City, in your area. There is no use having an emergency call to your supplier if they can not repair your equipment until a month’s time because they have to ship parts to the country from overseas. If you do business with a manufacturer or with respectable dealerships you will expect for them to have plenty of stock and parts available in local areas across the country or specifically in their local area of business. So ask yourself, does this company I am looking at investing money in, no matter how great or small, have enough stock on hand, consistently throughout the year, to ensure that my print solution will remain working without any major delays due to backorder or lack of stock? Ask them when you are investigating your purchase.

Another point to cover is the carriage of supplies in technicians’ vehicles. This was mentioned only moments earlier with our scenario of a technician diagnosing a problem without having an on the spot solution for it. You will see more and more technicians driving around in station wagons with loads of supplies in their possession as the demand for higher productivity solutions come in to play and the requirements to minimise downtime become ever more so apparent. Now it would be completely impossible to expect a technician to carry every single part of every single model or make of product their company supplied in their vehicle, or to carry consumables for every model so please don’t expect that every time a technician arrives at your door for them to have every exact part as required for your print solution’s problem, due completely to the diverse range of problems that may arise from different scenarios, makes and models. But what you should expect is for a technician to at least have the bare minimum of basic parts in their vehicles to ensure that the standard, or regular, maintenance requirements can be met, without having to RTB (return to base).

This is becoming a very important part of the sales strategy to highlight the requirements of technicians to maintain supply levels in their vehicles, not only for customer service and reduction of down time but also to provide an overview of the commitment a company makes to their clients in maintaining satisfaction throughout their business relationship. It also helps reduce costs of the supplier by having a technician RTB for equipment they could, or should, have been carrying in their vehicle.

The topic of supplies relates mostly to commercial based equipment, rather than your $100 printers from the local office supplies store. Obviously they are not going to supply you with a maintenance agreement or any form of guarantee in terms of parts, besides a limited warranty or extended warranty, so make sure if you are looking at purchasing something small whether or not it is worth investing that little bit more initially to ensure the smooth running of your office and the support you require.

Supplies are a very important part of your print solution, they keep you going and help you get the absolute most out of your investment, no matter how large or small. Without the proper chain of supply no business can run effectively and the flow on effect that this could happen to the relationship of client to vendor can be diminished immediately. If you feel that your current vendor is not keeping their end of the bargain I recommend you shop around, this industry is highly competitive and the levels of customer service, supply chains & commitment to clients is increasing by the minute. Be sure to protect your office’s interest by investing in a company that stocks their own parts, carries their own parts and has a proven track record of successfully supplying clients in your area, at the end of the day if you can reduce down time by half think about how much money your company saves in productivity.

In this article I will cover a few of the major changes of MS Project 2010, for a more in-depth view, and a chance to download the beta version of MS Project 2010 visit the Microsoft site.

Let me start by saying that I have been using MS Project for over 10 years now. It’s always been a love hate relationship. Often for smaller projects I would turn to using Excel, its flexibility gave me be ability to quickly organize and change project tasks.

So when I had a chance to talk to the Microsoft Project marketing team, and they remarked that the improvements made were as a result of integrating Excel like flexibility, they had my full attention. In fact did you know that the number one competitor to Project is Excel. The guys at Microsoft finally figured out that they were their own competition, and after more than a decade decided to do something about it.

Project Server 2010, a quick side note.

Collaboration seems to be Microsoft’s new favourite word. You cannot talk to one of their PR people without it being mentioned at least a dozen times in 5 minutes. Not having much experience with this product I will leave its review to those more qualified, I will touch on a couple of key points.

Integrating Project Server with SharePoint allows easy publishing and sharing of Project Plans. Equally important is the ability for project staff to update the plans with new tasks as well as their progress. For many this can be a useful feature, especially when dealing with teams that are not all at the same location.

The Review

There are two versions of MS Project 2010: Standard and Professional. Let me start by saying – if you are Project Manager, or work in such a capacity, get the Professional version. Many new innovative and useful features are in the Professional version. The official Microsoft line is that the Standard version is for project managers who don’t need collaborative tools. All I can say is that many of the new features are equally useful as standalone features, and while I don’t want to accuse Microsoft of a bait and switch, in my eyes they lose a few good will points on this one.

The New Look

The first thing that will strike most users, who have used the previous version of MS Project, is the new Ribbon toolbar, keeping with the UI changes across the MS Office suite, Project 2010 has joined the ranks.

The introduction of the ribbon tool bar has been the subject of many debates, so I feel there is no reason to start another one here. Suffice it to say, lover it or hate it, it’s here and it’s here to stay.

Excel like Flexibility

When they spoke of more Excel like functionality, what struck me as the closest link is the ability to switch to Manually Schedule mode. You can create tasks without duration or dates, filling in the required fields as the information become available. Microsoft also refers to the top-down approach to creating tasks. Allowing you to create a Parent task first, adding subtask and milestones which may have dates that do not match, but you can adjust at a later time.

This feels more natural to the way most people organize their projects. Allowing for easy shifting of tasks and associated information will give most Project users the ability to work easily with large and small projects, especially if using methodologies such as RUP or Agile.

It should also be noted that the copy and past functionality has been enhanced. Now when you copy and paste your information into a spreadsheet, the formatting such the indentation of sub-tasks will remain. However, when using the Save As – Excel file option, the formatting will not be transferred.

I should add here that I was also hopping Microsoft had found a way to copy the Gantt chart view as well, however this functionality will not be available, and there are no plans in the foreseeable future to do so.

Inactive Tasks

Professional version only, flag tasks as inactive and still keep them in your project plan. Should you have a task that is currently not required, but it or its associated information may be of use at a later time, flagging a task as inactive gives you the best of both worlds. Project will ignore the inactive task, until you decide to reactive it.

Team Planner

Professional version only, simply put it’s a manual resource lever. Unlike the Automated Resource Lever (which still exists) in previous versions, you can drag and drop tasks to different resources as required & ensure that no one is over/under allocated as you see fit.

TimeLine View

(Correction: I had previously, stated that the TimeLine view was in the professional version only. However one of the internal Microsoft people had pointed out to me that this feature is available in the standard edition. After double checking the information this article now shows the updated information as of: April 16th, 2010)

Probably one the most striking features of the new MS Project. Certainly it’s one of the first things that the Microsoft’s marketing team is always quick to point out. The other handy feature of the time line is the View Slider. A portion of the Timeline view is highlighted, by moving the highlighted section, your Gantt chart will move with it. As well you can expand or contract the Gantt chart as you expand or contract the View Slider across the TimeLine view.

It’s easy to export, or cut and paste, into your e-mail, presentation or whatever your needs may be. And the formatting, such as the color pallet or size, can be modified even after pasted into another application. I have heard many project managers comment that this option alone is worth the upgrade, and yes next time I have to show a quick timeline of the project this will come in handy.

What was taken out

A few items were removed, Microsoft’s reasoning was these were outdated & rarely used features that caused made the software unnecessarily big and slow.

Custom Forms – the ability to create and use custom forms through the user interface.
OWC resource availability graphs
Some – Add-ins, sample macros, and project guide>
Pert Analysis
Copy picture (no longer automatically creates an Office document and cannot export to the JPG format)
Format Duration
ResMgmt Task Entry
Rollup Formatting
Toggle Read only
Update File

I have no doubt that someone resourceful will create a third party add-on to put this functionality back in, so if you are one of the few that relied on these features in the past, don’t lose hope.

The Final Word

Most of the previous features work as they have before, the new ribbon bar may make this easier to find, but the nuts and bolts are still the same. The Automated Levelling Resources option, which we all love to hate, will still push task out to infinity. And sharing resources from a pool is still requires a creation of a separate project file with resources to link to.

It should be noted that any Schedule you create with MS Project 2010, can be opened with Project 2007, some formatting may be lost, but for the most part the information will be all there.

A word to Microsoft. Thanks, just one thing, I don’t know many professionals that switched to Project 2007. It really had no significant upgrades, majority of Project Managers I know of stayed with 2003, which is not compatible.

Inside source say that MS Project 2010 is ready to go now, however it will not be release until Office 2010 is ready to ship. So expect it in the third quarter of 2010.

Unconfirmed reports tell me that the price for the Standard version will be around $250.00 while the Professional version could run as high as $750.00 per copy.

Finally, despite some of my reservations, as someone who relies on MS Project as part of his everyday job I am looking forward to the new release and will probably get it as soon as it comes out.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality is ensuring that information is accessible only to those authorized to have access, regardless of where the information is stored or how it is accessed. Each employee within an organization has the responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of the information entrusted to them for job performance and this responsibility must be reinforced through awareness. An awareness training program should address at the minimum, the following confidentiality topics to ensure an acceptable level of knowledge is imparted upon organization employees.

a. Access Control

Access control is any mechanism used for controlling which resources a user can access and the tasks which can be performed with the accessed resources. Passwords and biometrics are two methods of access control that can be used individually or in combination to limited access to resources.

b. Passwords

Passwords and their safekeeping are a fundamental element of system and network security and are of key interest to hackers. An intruder in the organization’s physical area may check under keyboards and in drawers to find passwords that have been written down and then use it to gain access to private information. Password protection can be augmented by additional security measures such as smart cards and biometric identification systems. Employees need to be instructed on password creation and handling best practices.

c. Biometrics

Biometric technology can identify individuals based on the physical characteristics of human body parts. The primary biometric technologies in use are retina scanning, facial recognition, voice recognition, and fingerprint scanning. A sample is submitted by a user requesting access and compared to a database for a match with access permissions. Biometric information is difficult to duplicate and when used in conjunction other access methods such as passwords and badges creates a very good defense against unauthorized access to organizational resources.

d. Encryption

Encryption is any process that converts readable (plaintext) data into secret code (ciphertext) to prevent unauthorized disclosure of the information. It can be used in Internet transactions, e-mail, and wireless networking. An encryption algorithm is a mathematical procedure that scrambles information to make it unreadable to unauthorized parties. Encryption has become the foundation of securing networks, communications systems, and online transactions. Employees should utilize encryption whenever possible to ensure security.

e. Privacy

Privacy is the prevention of confidential or personal information from being viewed by unauthorized parties and the control over its collection, use, and distribution. The terms privacy and confidentiality can be used interchangeably. Maintenance of privacy is essential to prevent unauthorized disclosure which can lead to identity theft or other issues.

f. Ethics

Employees should be given clear instruction, via policy, on what the organization considers acceptable behavior and should also be informed of the processes in place for clarification of ethical concerns and for disclosure of unethical activities.

Data Integrity

Data Integrity is defined as safeguarding the accuracy and completeness of information and processing methods from intentional, unauthorized, or accidental changes. Maintaining data integrity is essential to the privacy, security, and reliability of business data. Integrity of data can be compromised by malicious users, hackers, software errors, computer virus infections, hardware component failures, and by human error in entering or transferring data. Mitigating data integrity risks can allow for rapid recovery of data. Employees can mitigate risk by regular data backups and off-site secure storage of backup media, integrity monitoring tools, and encryption.

a. Configuration Management

Configuration or change management is a process to introduce changes into an information technology environment. Change in an environment can introduce new vulnerabilities and by the process of configuration management changes can be implemented in a documented, systematic, monitored, and reversible manner. Formalized configuration management processes should be implemented by organizations and followed by employees.

b. Configuration Auditing

Configuration auditing involves the verification that only approved changes have been made to systems. Auditing also verifies that the configuration management procedures are adhered to by employees and that all settings are documented. Auditing to actively monitor systems and log changes for reconciliation with configuration management documentation can be performed either manually or automated with the use of specialized systems.

Availability

Availability is ensuring that authorized users have access to information and associated assets when required. This can be accomplished utilizing data backup plans, disaster recovery plans, and business continuity/recovery plans. Employees should be trained in their responsibilities as it relates to data backups, disaster recovery, and business continuity.

a. Data Backup Plan

Data backups are an essential part of information security and an organization must be able to restore data in the event of data corruption or hardware failure. Backups should be done on a regular basis and the frequency is dependent upon how much data an organization is willing to lose in the event of loss (Recovery Point Objective). The backup media should be stored in a secure location, possibly off-site, which is not exposed to the same hazards as the primary data. Backups should also be periodically restored to test systems to ensure that the process is functioning properly and within the specified time frame (Recovery Time Objective) before the need for the backup actually arises.

b. Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

A DRP is a plan that is used to recover quickly after a disaster with a minimum of impact to the organization. DR planning should be part of the initial stage of implementing IT systems. DR plans are developed in response to risk assessments and designed to mitigate those risks. Risk assessments determine the frequency and extent of potential disasters; this will allow an organization to decide which technologies to implement to achieve an appropriate level of recovery. External audits can be valuable to discover deficiencies, although an organization’s DRP can never be fully tested until a disaster actually occurs.

c. Business Continuity Plan or Business Resumption Plan

The business continuity plan (BCP), sometimes called a business resumption plan (BRP), is an essential part of a disaster recovery plan. This is a plan that details, step-by-step, how to continue or quickly resume normal business after a disaster occurs in a methodical manner. The BCP must also identify employees responsible for implementing the various plan components and these employees should receive clear instruction on their responsibilities in the event of a disaster. The plan must be revised regularly to ensure that any changes to business processes are reflected in the BCP.

The advancement and easy availability of new and useful technologies today have enabled thousands of organizations worldwide to implement and become heavily dependent on technology for their business needs. Information technology (IT) has invaded and proved its immense benefits even in the smallest of organizations. Nowadays it is not possible to run any organization, small or big, without the use of some computer or telecom related technology. Today many organizations can easily afford to buy the necessary computers, software, telecommunications, etc, for running their businesses. But they do not understand the need for managing their IT implementation or ongoing maintenance properly due to numerous reasons, including lack of appropriate knowledge. For example, a small industry’s business owner may buy a single computer initially for general use. After seeing the benefits of using computers, he may immediately decide to buy 25 more for his staff. Within a short time his business will be computerized, and very soon IT support headaches will enter the business. Using a computer may be easy, but maintaining a computer system is a complicated task. Users may suddenly experience crippling virus attacks, equipment failures, software licensing issues, data corruption, data loss, backup issues, upgrade issues, and so on. They may not be in a position to support and maintain a computer network for its smooth functioning. Overnight, a smart purchasing assistant may undergo a crash course in computer maintenance, or buy a book called ‘Computer Maintenance for Laymen,’ and soon will be given the responsibility for technical support of the business along with his other responsibilities. This is how IT departments start in thousands of organizations. However, this sort of approach will lead to major and uncontrollable issues later.

As mentioned earlier, no modern organization can run its operations or survive without using one or more computers, software, telecommunications, Internet and so on. In view of the technical complexities involved there will be several IT related issues and risks that can cause minor to major irritations, or even bring an organization to halt abruptly. If an important computer system stops working then businesses have to virtually close down as it is not possible to switch over to alternative manual processes for any length of time. Secondly, today’s computer systems and networks are extremely complicated for any business people to maintain or support them on their own. Using information technology is a Catch-22 situation. You cannot live with IT, nor can you live without IT. Hence a specialized technical support team having knowledge of IT service management is required to understand how the systems work and how to baby sit them. Today a professional technology support department is as essential as a qualified finance department or a senior management to any organization. From a nuts and bolts perspective, IT service management means the ‘techies’ (employed or outsourced) in the organization professionally managing and maintaining the computers, networks, telecommunications, data storage, retrieval, e-mail systems, databases, etc, owned or used by your business. Unless the technology you use for your business is managed in a proper way your organization can get into serious trouble. The following examples show the pinpricks and hair rising issues organizations can face without a professional IT service management.

1.Your end-users don’t know whom to contact when their computers and other IT equipment become sick.

2. Your techies attend end-user calls occasionally if they can, when they can.

3. Business managers do not understand why their IT infrastructure is always having disruptions of a similar nature.

4. Monday morning chaos. All computer systems down for some reason. Your techies probably performed some maintenance activities over the weekend.

5. Businesses cannot commit about their products and services to their external customers.

6.Your end-users do not know if all IT services will be available for them every day to complete their activities.

7. Viruses, crippling and lengthy IT shutdowns, etc, are common.

8. End-users always face shortage of computers, disk space, data corruption, data loss, etc.

9. Business managers do not know why they need to shell out another bag of cash for some software the IT department needs.

Though organizations are free to have their own proprietary flavors of technical support suiting their needs, it is always better to adopt some international best practices as they prevent organizations from reinventing the wheel. This is where ITIL or the IT Infrastructure Library will help. However, as soon as the word ITIL is mentioned, many overloaded and overburdened IT departments and businessmen start imagining all sorts of scary views like it is a bureaucratic process, it is very complex, it must be highly theoretical, etc., which can only add to their woes rather than reduce it. The fear is understandable because ITIL was created by a government organization (Office of Government Commerce, British Government, UK), unlike something like six sigma that was created by a fortune 500 organization led by a glamorous CEO. After all governments worldwide are known for their lethargic, obscure and bureaucratic processes that only delay and make things complex. However as you can never judge a book by its cover, you should not judge ITIL by who created it. Also many businessmen, IT departments and managements of small and medium organizations live in the misconception that ITIL is beyond their expertise or affordability, and perhaps applicable only to large organizations. But ITIL is not the scary stuff as most businesses imagine. Actually ITIL is a lot of practical IT management common sense and not just some impractical theories. And nor is it some costly and complex rocket science that can only be handled by specialists and magicians. ITIL can be implemented by practically any modern organization (small, medium or big) to bring some law and order to their IT infrastructure. By implementing ITIL you can avoid or eliminate all the troublesome issues mentioned above and bring a very high degree of stability and predictability to your IT infrastructure. ITIL offers value and return on investment to every business owner, service provider, CIOs, CTOs and a CEO as mentioned below.

1. Proven and tested processes. No need for businesses to re-invent the wheel for implementing IT services in their organizations. Covers end-to-end.

2. Non-proprietary practices. ITIL is owned by the Office of Government Commerce, but does not require a license to practice and it is independent of any commercial solution or platform.

3. Improved quality of IT service for business functions. Reduced downtime, improved customer and end-user satisfaction.

4. Measurable, controllable, recoverable.

5. ITIL is scalable. It can be adapted for any size of organization.

6. Proactive rather than reactive. Clearly-defined roles, responsibilities and activities.

7. Greater understanding of IT and its limitations by the business. Business will understand IT better and vice versa.

8. There is also a range of accredited ITIL training and education courses. This means there are plenty of support services, training institutes, tools and consultancy services that can help your organization’s IT departments.

9. Return on Investment (ROI). ITIL helps IT organizations demonstrate their return on investment and measurable value to the business, and also cut IT costs. This helps establish a business case for new or continuing investment in IT.

10. ITIL also helps in outsourcing. ITIL is widely practiced among many industry service providers and they can easily help your organization’s IT departments.

11. Continuous improvement, stability, and trouble prevention.

12. Improved business image. Businesses will also learn what to commit (and what not to commit) to their external customers.

To conclude ITIL can help you tackle one of the most feared expressions in modern times and that is, ”The computer is down” as humorously quoted by Normal Augustine, a famous US aircraft businessman.

Introduction:

In a global business world from service provider’s perspective, lot of importance is given to the acquisition of a business from new client. This cycle of acquisition of any client is generally very long which is not solely due to contractual and legal implications but many times clients will take decisions of awarding the work based on “what value organization will gain” on a long term basis by bringing in the service provider (or vendor) to the organization. Working with newly acquired client or existing client is proving enormous challenges to the service provider community in existing business scenario because of economic slowdown, ramp down business, stiff competition, impact on pricing and increased cost of operation and maintenance etc. Hence the search for getting better from service provider at a lesser cost is inevitable option for them.

On the other hand, once the business is acquired, the service provider tend to get bit relaxed with the mindset that, client will stay and business can be handled as it comes to. At times the relations between the service provider and the client sometimes gets strained once both of them starts getting in to each other’s known and unknown area of weaknesses and it can start developing crack if the focus on building relationships do not go in positive way.

Today clients are looking at service providers as a not just someone who could be hired and fired but as a business partner and he is ready to share his business eco system to help service provider understand the way business is performed by him. It should just look like a business marriage and strengthening of each other core competencies rather than taking a view of one time partners. Clients are increasingly looking for focusing on building long terms relationships with their service providers and developing a common platform which can exchange the business needs for common goal.

The service provider of today’s business world needs to look at improving the client’s business experience for his organization, customers, and competitors. What type of service, product or tool proposition and its implementation can provide edge over to the client among his competitors? From client’s perspective, his state of mind reads as how drastically he can improve his bottom line or top line and how client can improve his customer base as well as revenue targets or it could be how he can minimize the operational, technical or service related issues which are impacting the business or how best he can bring down the operation and maintenance cost of his IT services.

Most of the professionally managed global organizations who embark upon vendor management and outsourcing their product or services or both have their short, medium and long terms business plans to derive significant business benefits from the service providers and measure them as a part of BLA, SLA or OLA. Such types of agreements are well designed at the start of contractual relationship and then are typically reviewed at fix periodicity with the service provider.

Those days are over, where services of service providers (vendors) are justified at the cost of dollars which is paid to them per hour and they can show as per contractual terms what has been accomplished to claim the payments. Clients are expecting much more cream, than just a dollar value as a freebee in terms of value ads. Clients expect service providers to create positive impact on their business in many ways. Hence the need of hour for service provider is to plan for it and demonstrate on a continuous basis the value they are creating for their clients. It became essential for service providers to come up with value added proposals for business growth of client and plan for is capability demonstration to show greater confidence which can really make a difference

For a service provider, experience with newly acquired client shall be similar to the sports tournament where first few minutes of game is very important and if you show professional game with winning spirit and confidence in achieving results then your chances of winning new client are very high. Further even if you are a seasoned player, you need to win every game to prove your credibility.

Today the service providers need to follow a mantra of “Win the customer every day”. Every small step taken by the service provider need to be translated in to benefit which his client is looking for. It calls for interacting with the client in a business centric way and managing the customer experience more rigorously. Couple of survey’s done by service providers may show a higher percentage of customer centric approach however the reality is how many clients will agree to them.

Session highlight: In a game changing business environment as a service provider, it is absolutely essential to adapt to the changes in the business environment of your client and quickly align yourself to demonstrate that clients changed goals are your goals moving forward. For example if client is looking at overall cost cutting by 10% then as a service provider what will be your proposition to client in optimizing and consolidating services. You need to make your client feel that you are part of his mission.

Need for value creation:

In engineering terminology there is a concept of “perpetual motion machine” which works on the principal of providing more output as compare to the inputs, similar philosophy is adopted by the business community who expects more output per dollar.

Need for value creation is felt by client organization, globally due to multiple reasons,

o Clients are looking for differentiators which can influence their business outcome in a positive way.

o It is a tendency of business to get more by spending less as a part of business philosophy.

o Market pressure, stiff competition, business complexities and growth trajectories are pushing them hard to do more for less.

o Managers from client organization are required to impress their management for their survival by getting these additional values from their service providers.

o It is possible to compare and choose the service providers on the basis of additional value provided by them to the business.

o Client expects service provider to be a business partner in his growth.

What is value creation?

By intent, the definition of value creation could be different for every client depending upon his business goals and pains, however in a simplistic term it may be the act of a service provider which delights client (it may be while creating, implementing, or managing of a service or product) because it provides returns, over and above the investments made by the client or cost paid for the services. Sometimes it is termed as freebee because it comes free along with the service or product rendered as per contractual requirement.

Distinction between value creation and paid services:

There is always confusion with many professionals in terms of differentiating value creation from paid services. For instance, client organization may feel no more wonder if you deliver services and or products as per contractual payment terms and conditions, however value created for same client could be over and above the dollar value paid and in terms of tangible or in tangible benefits such as ROI, improved customer delight of client organization, reduction in overall number of business issues or Problems or increase in customer base.

Value creation details are not quantified in contractual terms in SOW or purchase order but they are defacto and many times unwritten client expectations and in some cases service provider has to discover them and bring it to the notice of client stakeholders to win his confidence.

Session highlight: Value creation generates long lasting effect on the overall business climate of client organization.

Strategy for value creation:

Why strategy?

On account of explosion in IT services demand, service provider organizations have recently started stating in their core principles of working towards client that they believe in creating a business strategy for their clients which can deliver greater value. Such strategies can provide a better confidence to the client, aligning with his business objectives or concern and provide them required comfort.

The strategy of value creation for client in a way is a continuous process and need to be revamped along with the changes to the business objectives or concern of client based on his business environment.

Session highlight: The business strategy which service provider need to create for his client shall be aimed at creating minimum 2X value over and above the size of the contract value which he receives from his client.

Levels of value creation:

Value creation for client happens in a various ways and it really requires thorough understanding of client’s stakeholders, business, technology and operations as a whole. Client Organization has various stakeholders such as staff, senior management, end users, customers, other vendors etc. Value perceived by each one of they could be different depending upon their problems, issues, concerns and business objectives. It is important for service provider to consider all of them while serving such organization.

The value created by service provider has different flavors and it is opportunity based. It is a continuous process although it gets created at instance level. For the sake of convenience it can be broadly classified at 2 levels.

Strategic or Business Level: At business level the value creation is aggregated effect on business environment due to the service or product supplied by the service provider and is measured in a tangible manner in terms of numbers, percentage or factors etc… The calculation and arriving at business value is tricky and sometimes it could be misleading. On few occasions the measurement of value creation is intangible.

The good examples of service provider’s value creation in a tangible manner are No of new customers added by client due to outstanding services given by service provider, Growth in revenue in percentage or percentage Improvement in revenue.

Intangible values are difficult to measure hence they could be stated such as service provider can help client in consistently implementing the regulatory standard, or maintaining the compliance or providing ease of operation or sourcing the difficult skills when it is critically needed for the business.

Operation Level: At operation level value creation could be tangible or in tangible depending upon the business environment of client organization. Operational level value creation may or may not have overall effect on business environment. It is more local in nature.

The good examples of service provider’s value creation in a tangible manner are SLA based improvements, High availability of system, % Reduction in down time, improved response time in percentage and intangible value measures could be highest level of collaboration, outstanding team work, process compliance.

Session highlight: Value created for every stakeholder of client organization is broadly classified at business and operation level

Value creation framework:

Every service provider needed to create a client specific value creation framework aligned to client’s business environment which can be used on a continual basis to create value added instances. The framework brings lot of consistency and unique understanding among the team members of service provider organization. Such framework should work as value creation engine and is back -up with set of tools and processes to capture the pulse of customer on the ongoing basis. Service provider may need to do investments in this regard keeping in mind growth of business and relationship with his client.

Understand the value propositions and create plan:

The value creation proposition typically starts from the day engagement with your client begin. There is concerted effort required from service provider and his team to systematically plan every activity that enhances value for his client. When new service requests are raised by client service provider shall focus more on providing additional value rather than providing low cost services. Many times client may not be clear or vocal in telling his service provider what can really make a difference to his business, in such cases service provider need to validate his understanding about the value client organization could gain by doing certain tasks. This can be done through various discussions forums and by looking at the scope of work.

Here are few inputs which can help in creating a structured plan for value creation.

o Find out what client value in it,

o Distinguish between technology and business aspects of client engagement

o What features and services, client gives top importance

o What are the top most challenges, issues, unique constraints or problems client is facing

o Talk to client stakeholders such as technical team leads, end users, customers, senior management to understand business imperatives and impacts

o Understand the client environment, market, customers, location,industry,culture

o Understand how customer intimacy and collaboration can be enhanced

o Establish common understanding and definition of value in consensus with client

Implement value creation plan:

Implementing the value creation plan requires focus and common understanding with in service provider’s organization. Every resource engaged in providing services to the client should understand clearly the value needs to be delivered to the client in the course of time as well as the process by which this can be reported to management of client organization as well as service provider organization.

The value creation plan shall consider number of value add proposals at technology, process, tool, service or business level which can benefit to client,each one of them has to be weighed against the business environment of client. The service provider organization shall believe in open culture of working with client and shall have courage to point out ambiguity, blind spots, problem area in a formal manner which can minimize the impact on clients business in adverse manner.

Sometimes value added proposals may have short term and or long term benefits, every element of benefit which can add value to any stakeholder of client organization shall be considered.

While implementing value added proposal focus shall be on good resources that can really generate lot of value to client organization, such resources shall be retained.

Capture, Qualify and Quantify value creation instances:

Many times, teams of service provider’s organization probably do a lot of value added work for their client, however they lack in bringing visibility to the client as well as to the service provider organization management, hence it goes unnoticed. This poses the service provider team to a disadvantage since it loses opportunity to get recognized. The other disadvantage is that, senior management of service provider organization lacks the view and misses the opportunity to show case best practices to other prospective clients. Hence the value creation framework and its proliferation to the team in service provider organization provide right solution to this problem.

Value creation is a process of transforming the client business status in a positive way to enable him to be more competitive and meet his business goal in a time bound manner

Measurement of value creation requires instituting systematic process to ensure that all value added instances are captured, quantified, represented and endorsed by client. This helps in creating more convincing ground for strengthening and nurturing the relationship. Most of the time client themselves experience the impact of value added services they received from service providers.

Qualification of what constitutes a value added service for a particular client is very important and that happens through a strong collaboration and frequent consultation with client organization at all levels. The focus of qualifying a value added service obviously comes from his business environment and it is essential to pick-up those bottlenecks, hurdles, issues through continuous dialogue, review meetings and management presentations. Once you decide those attributes of qualifying value elements then it is possible to design a process and or tools to capture, quantify and measure them at intended periodicity. It is also important to check the qualifying criteria with client. For example for rolling out a new business process through the IT system, client faces change management issues with his staff and you are a service provider of IT system, you may want to offer him a change facilitator who can really address this issue to avoid deployment failures. Hence qualification of what will be really a value to client is of prime importance.

Quantification comes immediately after you decide on what has been a qualified value to your client.

Quantification of a value added element from its non existence or minimal state to the sizable state after you as a service provider work on that can show a clear difference in your achievement. Whether it is client or service provider, quantification of a value add in measurable terms always provides comparative reference indicator within organization and many times among the competitors. This quantification of value is done in many ways such as numbers, or percentage or in the scale of 0-5 or 0-10 etc… Accurate calculation of value adds measures in a timely manner at logical periodicity provides good trend to help service provider to work towards achieving more and simultaneously show casing such trend at periodic intervals, adds to the confidence level of your client.

Measurement of value creation:

Measurement of value creation requires clear understanding and definition of measures, timely capturing them and articulating in a way it is convincing to the client.Value creation happens in a various way and throughout the period till service provider works with client organization. Metrics created for this reason should also measure the performance of tools, processes and people to let you know whether they are showing value based results or not.

Some of the typical measures which can provide the proof that value creation is happening are given below.

Customer Delight Index (CDI):

This is one of the measures; service provider can use to capture the degree to which the client is delighted. This measure can be captured at regular periodicity. The rising trend in CDI and consistently maintaining that at highest level is one of indicator that client is happy with your valued services. One can decide which aspects of services can contribute most to the customer delight. Few examples of customer delight are consistently timely delivery of services throughout engagement or a period, or demonstrating service level performance better than agreed SLA, response time to the queries which can be much better than agreed time line.

Reducing system down time:

Use of innovative techniques and ideas while providing services to client can lead to better throughput. For example if you are undertaking maintenance of clients IT systems which use to have downtime of 4 to 6 hours per week and you have innovatively created better maintenance procedures and tools to bring down such down time drastically to just one or two hours. This constitutes a good example of value add to show case to your client.

Client endorsement:

When the value add measures are captured, it is necessary to represent them in appropriate forum. Service providers can use the opportunity of periodic management reviews, business reviews and progress reviews with client organization to share the results of the efforts taken towards creating value added services. Many times service providers select opportunity to discuss value additions with client during contract renewals or extension period to create conducive atmosphere and impress upon the fact that they are aligned to the business goals or concerns of client organization.

At team level such value added services are shared to the client in the form of case studies or best practices. One of the important aspects of knowing whether we have created value for our client or not can be addressed by getting outside perspective. Such perspective can be obtained by talking to analyst group, competitors, or surveying organization. This is bit tricky due to the confidentiality reasons and some time due to the ambiguity in value added measures. Service providers can takes 3rd party view to understand value creation for large size client organizations.

Judging client pulse and his endorsement on value creation for the work performed by the service provider also reflects on whether the stakeholders in client organization are happy or not and the relationship is in Win-Win situation or not

Session highlights:

Value creation framework is a sustainable asset for client organization to provide him confidence and visibility on what service provider can do to enhance his business value

Tools for value creation:

Service provider organizations may have specific tools created and in use for multiple clients and some of them could be similar for similar engagements. There may be a need to create specific tools looking at clients’ business environment which if used successfully can provide higher benefits and value to the client.

It is essential to think of those tools which can work and provide quick results to client organization. There is also a need of doing this before client starts feeling that he is no more getting the value by engaging service provider.

Following are some of the recommended tools

o ROI models: Return on Investment (ROI) models are invariably used by many service providers to show case the value coming out of engagements over a period of time. However ROI calculations are tricky in deciding the parameters for input and output

o Reusable components: This is one of the great asset service provide can en cash on because the reusable component can have a positive impact on deliverables and output of service provider organization which minimizes errors, reduces time and efforts and provides jump start for client engagements. If service provider do not have already created reusable component then he can create such components for his client who can be used by client organization on the ongoing basis without spending extra time and efforts. It becomes a value add asset. It is also relatively easy to calculate and show case the value added service or product to client organization which uses it in a recurring way. Typical examples of creating reusable components are set of requirement/use cases, test cases, templates, objects, and platforms, standard business process flows for a particular business process or product.

o Customer delight survey: Customer delight survey is one of the powerful tools used by almost every service provider to get to know the degree of value added services given to his client. Many service provider organizations have survey portals developed for their client to capture the inputs on value added services they provided to various stakeholders. The survey feedback has specific questions, ratings detailing what value added service /product they received from service providers.

o Idea generation and Innovation models: This is one of the top most and favorite expectation, client organization has from his service provider and many times the renewal contracts look at these aspects very particularly. Client organization would like to understand what framework, service provider has created, what are the demonstrable components, do resources really look at every problem and issues in an innovative manner etc. In fact all the roots for value added services come from innovative solutions. Many service provider organizations have portal, frameworks and drives for fostering innovation and ideas which can come from employees and are implemented for their clients to provide them benefits and value added services

o Value register: A simplistic attempt to capture all value added instances for your client throughout the engagements is to maintain a value register and keep recording all instances of value added services given to client in a timely manner.

o Motivational tools: Many service provider organizations have a practice of using motivational tools to foster generation of new, creative and innovative ideas coupled with incentives, rewards etc. Many time client organization also provide certificates and cash awards to service providers employees for their outstanding contribution and providing value added services.Some of the examples of these are, providing out of box solutions to client’s issues or problems which are really not part of day to day functions

o Best practices: Uses of best practices is similar to the using reusable components. Many service provider works under multiple client environments hence the best practices collected from other client accounts and engagements are stored as a repository and are used when similar situations for other clients are encountered. The uses of best practices are very effective in addressing client’s issues or problems when business environment and situations are same. This definitely provides good value add to the client organization.

o Client specific tools: In a larger client accounts, relationship management is very critical and visibility at management level is of top priority. Most of the service providers take efforts towards creating program dashboards, scorecards, SLA management dash board and reporting portals to show case the achievements, trends of improvements on various parameters to demonstrate health of client account. This is truly a value added service to the client organization.

o Escalations and issue management tools: These are very common however important tools especially when the client account is large. The obvious value add from such tools to client are significant reduction of time and efforts in processing escalations and issues. Sharing of information such as when issues cropped-up or escalations raised, who is handling and what is the resolution to the relevant stakeholders is critical when it impacts the business. You can build excellent work flow and end to end process with the help of these tools. Many service provider organizations populate the issue and escalation databases for future problem management. Even for smaller client account, a simple excel based issue/escalations register with requisite details forms a good repository and such historical events can be of some help to future problems of similar nature.

o Six sigma tools: Six sigma tools are very powerful and result oriented. They help the service provider teams to establish the Voice of Customer (VOC) which gets captured in definition phase. Measures such as Critical to Quality (CTQ) are identified and monitored through improvement cycle. Six sigma tools are quick enough for demonstrating values since the six sigma projects are typically of 2 to 3 months time frame. Since the tool is widely used and accepted, it is easy to convenience client on the merits of such tool usage to show case value additions.

Session highlights: Tools are those ammunitions which empowers service providers to do better for their clients consistently at lesser cost

In summary

Value creation for your client is not one time exercise of getting a smile on the face of your client but it is a continuous process of embedding a business strategy backed -up with innovative solutions and managing it throughout the client engagement to demonstrate measurable 2x returns for his investments.

Conducting business on the Internet requires the consideration of various security issues. Security policy development, security awareness training, or the various other components of the CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability) information security mantra will not be discussed, instead this article will focus on the basic types of security that businesses on the Internet need to address to secure their website from others with mal-intent.

An organization must initially assess its systems or functions and rate the operational criticality of each. The reason for this is that security implementations can be quite expensive and being able to determine the must have versus the nice to have through a risk based approach is vital to ensure that funds are directed towards the assets that are most at risk.

In general terms, a business with a presence on the Internet has to protect its website/server, associated infrastructure, bandwidth, and its domain name. Internet service obtained through a service provider must be sufficient in bandwidth for expected traffic, have the ability to scale based on demand requirements, and, if possible, provide some level attack filtering before reaching the organization’s network border. The next consideration would be to obtain a firewall system that provides for a semi-secure demilitarized zone (DMZ) interface on which to place public facing servers instead of on the private internal network. The firewall should also be resilient enough to be able to defend against denial of service (DOS) and other Internet based attacks. Internet traffic on the DMZ should be monitored via intrusion detection and/or prevention systems tied into an incident response plan in the event malicious activity is identified.

The business should also contact their domain name registrar and pay the additional fee so as to lock the domain name to prevent hackers from highjacking the web address by submitting a spoofed or forged domain name change request. Hardening the public or outside domain name server is also critical so that hackers do not gain access to it and change its entries to redirect your web traffic to an alternate unauthorized website (also a form of domain name highjacking). Once a domain name change is made and propagated throughout the Internet it could take several days to re-propagate a correction.

This article is not all inclusive and has not addressed other related subjects such as web server hardening or transactional security and non-repudiation for ecommerce, but its purpose is to convey an indication of the scope of required considerations in securing an organization’s online presence.

When industry’s most demanding companies need to increase the power of their data center investments and sustain the growing demand of IT services, they look for automation tools to better control the performance, security, compliance and availability of applications, machines and servers. IT management requires a platform that can integrate with their existing infrastructure, driving greater value throughout the organization. IT managers struggle to find the right tools to automate business system administration. The solution is a technology architecture that provides organizations the ability to sustain applications, infrastructure requirements and IT processes.

Medium to large enterprises must be setup to adequately monitor and measure the performance of the data center environment. Managing tasks from troubleshooting, performing analysis and conducting basic metrics is an ongoing battle. In the typical data center landscape, application management can be quite an undertaking. Large enterprises may have thousands of servers, sustaining numerous applications.

In order to effectively manage the alignment of business needs and IT provision requirements, data center automation is a necessity. Supporting, running and serving the potentially thousands of applications, processes and services can be costly, in terms of time, money and valuable IT resources. Standardization of the provisioning process lays the groundwork for successful data center automation. By automating the server provisioning best practices of an organization, servers are provisioned identically, providing consistent quality and higher levels of predictability.

Confirmation of the customization capabilities will help determine if the solution can work with even the most complex of environments. It is also wise to look at the various change management tools designed to improve servers, storage and networking, all of which are critical to an organization’s data center automation requirements. Lastly, by ensuring that the configuration management capability is sufficient for the organizations data center needs is imperative.

Standardizing business rules and procedures is conducive for transparent managed resources. Data center automation can reduce labor and hardware costs, and improve IT availability and responsiveness. The result is more productive administrators and a higher level of quality IT service. Automation for pre-determined conditions can alleviate the headaches normally associated with manually implementing these required operations. By scheduling and automating IT tasks such as system maintenance, server provisioning, deployments, migrations, ITIL service management and database backups, IT resources are better aligned with the operational needs.

Whether you are looking for a stand alone application management solution where simple process management tasks such as starting, stopping or monitoring applications; or a complete IT automation solution, for multi-tier management of one or more application servers, Web servers and various applications, data center automation is essential. Deploying cutting-edge technology, can improve the availability and performance of applications and services both internally and externally.

Traditional maps show a geographic area on a scale of static, while the digital mapping in the labor market through the creation of maps with the help of a computer, which boasted many interactive features such as rollover info window, zoom and click the icons hyperlinked referenced.

Although the use of a compass and other magnetic storage media allows users to store detailed maps, makes creating and editing digital at the beginning of the paper, it was onlyIM 20th century that led to advanced electronic technology, a revolution in digital cartography and mapping tools of the computer.

The easy availability of computer peripherals such as monitors, printers, scanners, plotters had stereo analysis, access to computer programs for database management, visualization and processing of real images, as well as the correct spatial analysis of the whole paper shows the process easier. Maps for the needs of new industrieswould be possible with this technology with the creation of geographic distance variables to the existing cards with new advanced features and capabilities.

Over time, the digital mapping taken steps to improve, so modern enterprise has many advantages as follows:

* Help your visitors find offices: You can easily integrate online interactive maps in your site, knowing it would save your customers to sites all over the world andhelping them to a particular value with ease.

* Easy-fairs of marketing: if you are attending a trade show, you can use digital mapping for potential customers to find your booth at the fair or in the driving seat through an interactive streetscape.

* Interactive maps of images for offline use: You can easily make your online multimedia presentations on the intranet or CD-ROM more attractive and interesting through the use of interactive image maps. Some ShowSoftware itself, you can export to JPG interactive maps that you use for your PowerPoint presentations.

* The most informative and interactive maps: With the digital mapping at your fingertips, you can labels, logos and symbols to show some points to add lines with curves and lines, and to add descriptions of the text at the tip of an instrument or info box. All these factors make it easier to follow the maps and the interactive nature.

* Other user-friendly digital mapping elements: elements such asLegend, maps, charts and maps in digital zoom function makes it the preferred choice over traditional printed maps.

* Plans for retailers real estate: For those in real estate, interactive maps of the floor plans of a building or mouse over the fields with information relating to real estate for sale and their prices can help a lot.

* Benefits for the tourism industry: The people that holidays are often looking for information, such as best deals book, the easiest way toachieve a goal that all offers and discounts to offer fares low cost, etc. With the aid of digital mapping, you can view all information about the various interactive features, making it easier for travelers to obtain data they need at a glance.

* For superior performance and Universities: Campus View details and exchange of information on different courses and their locations is easy with digital maps. This is how education can make a lot of advantage of digitalCartography.

No wonder that digital maps serve as useful guidelines for the transmission of complex information through various interactive features, which in turn will make it a better choice than their traditional counterparts.

The environment is changing, the number one driver, or move personal change "program" or organizational. The environment brings the necessary conditions for change. E 'a paradox that could be the basis for this relationship, since the change, and especially the growth of enterprises also make changes to the environment. Companies need more "country" when the scope of their operation, to name but a relationship.

The limitation of space is one example that is clearlythe changing world. It is not just the price of land steadily increasing, but the easy availability of space is one of the biggest problems of our time. As a result, businesses and operations of government is trying to change their activities. One solution is the "U" space.
Such a change, if the scarcity of land increasingly a problem of simple changes that will affect our lives. Less obvious, but many otherChanges that go so slowly that we barely recognize the change and … this is the point, we are not really able to anticipate changes.

An example of this is the influence of climate change. We all talk about it, but its one of the most important elements in a position to do something to the effect of the change in the current business.
It is true, for example, that climate change is the result of less snow in the Swiss Alps and the mountains in Spain?

AStudio (snow related) shows the progressive influences, but on an annual volume not true message. The average depth of snow, the duration of continuous snow cover and the number of days to show snowfall in the Swiss Alps, all very similar trends during the period 1931/99, a gradual increase until 1980 in advance (with minor interruptions during the late 1950 and early 1970), followed by a statistically significant decrease towards the end of the century.(http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003IJCli..23..733L)

Visible evidence of climate change becomes apparent when you see an old movie. Recently, the Spanish television aired "Carmen, de La Ronda", a film recorded in 1959 in the region of Ronda, in the province of Malaga () http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052675/. To look like an old movie you've undergone the experience of climate change, in this case, that the train has entered the territory of southern Spain. And if weHard to believe that the expectations of the country could be transformed into a true desert.

Important is the question of how to deal with these situations occur when the change is short term and does not affect the invisible but potentially lead to long-term problems?

© 2006 Hans Bool