Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
This case study describes how the IT department at Royal Bank of America came to choose SysAid as the solution to their IT woes.
Citation preview
SysAid Technologies Ltd. 1 Hayarden Street, P.O. Box 1142, Airport City 70100, Israel Toll Free (U.S.): 800-686-7047 • Fax (U.S.): +1 (617) 507-2559 Tel. (Israel): +972 (3) 533-3675 • Fax (Israel): +972 (3) 761-7205
http://www.sysaid.com
Case Study: Royal Bank America
Many IT service desk vendors provide both hosted and on-premise products with separate offerings that target large enterprises and smaller businesses. Help desk solutions are increasingly sold alongside other IT asset management products like security and personal computer configuration life cycle management systems. The latter are aimed at helping administrators manage any changes to hardware, software and firmware.
These markets have begun to converge to offer more all-encompassing IT service management tools. Gartner says vendors like Kaseya have become known for offering robust, enterprise-grade solutions focused on configuration management and asset monitoring with help desk capability, while others traditionally focused on ticketing and asset management, such as Numara, have branched out into offering other products for configuration and security. The enterprise vendors BMC, FrontRange Solutions, Kaseya and Numara are among providers offering lighter versions of help desk tools to small and midsize businesses.
page 1
Bank: Royal Bank America
Problem: Response times were lagging in this bank's IT department, which managed requests solely by email.
Solution: Help desk and asset management software to automate troubleshooting requests and tasks.
Using only email to manage troubleshooting for the 380 workstations, 180 end users and 55 servers at Royal Bank America in Narberth, Pa., had become untenable for the bank's two-person information technology administrative staff. Managing help desk requests through the in-box meant the duo at the $909.6 million-asset community bank could quickly become overwhelmed with emails asking for help. It also made tracking, queuing and prioritizing such problems nearly impossible. That's because the ad hoc email-based help desk method they were using was so unstructured: The one-by-one nature of email forced the two to comb through long threads from each source on every problem. So IT case histories - along with any of their nuances or similarities - became quickly buried in the serial deluge. The process made it difficult for the administrators to quickly understand and resolve problems.
"Going through emails was cumbersome; it simply took longer," says Gabriel Dudley, one of the two administrators at Royal. "It made it difficult to respond back to people in a timely manner."
Dudley began in 2010 to assess vendors in the automated help desk space. He knew Royal needed a software solution that could both track and monitor IT resources as well as organize and digitize troubleshooting capabilities, but do so inexpensively. In addition to troubleshooting via email, the bank was using spreadsheets to manually track its software and hardware inventory. Plus, Royal lacked a dedicated monitoring system that could watch servers for capacity issues and usage spikes.
Royal ended up choosing a help desk and asset management application from the Israeli company SysAid Technologies. Essentially, Dudley says, the product did what the bank wanted it to do for a cheaper price than other solutions, and it was easy to use . "Other software platforms mainly focused on the ticketing aspect, they didn't have asset management or monitoring," he says. "There was one that could actually do a lot more than SysAid, but it was very costly - in the tens of thousands of dollars. Financially, we didn't want to go that route."
Deployed since April, the SysAid solution has enabled Royal to digitally receive, categorize and prioritize employee help requests. The user-powered system allows staff to enter a portal by double-clicking a desktop icon. In the portal, they choose a category, set a priority and enter a title or description of the issue they're having. Hitting a "submit" button creates a ticket that Royal's administrators receive. A notes field helps them track and time-stamp any work they do. There are also fields denoting status, priority, location and due date. An attachments field allows for inclusion of documents or images to aid fixes. And whenever something is done on a ticket, the system emails end users, who can see the due date for when administrators expect to fix their problems. "One ticket has the history; everything we need to look at," Dudley says. "It's definitely enabled us to respond faster."
SysAid's asset management lists the bank's hardware, software and components, and describes the space remaining on C drives and partitions. A monitoring capability comes with email alerts, which signal when a server is down or at capacity on a C drive or particular partition, or if RAM or CPU usage is peaking at a certain time.
The software comes with a knowledge base, which Royal plans to deploy as soon as Dudley and his colleague populate the tool with enough how-to documents to make it worthwhile. Employees will be able to search for and perform step-by-step fixes to the most common IT issues; they'll also be able to reset their passwords.
Help for the Help Desk
http://www.sysaid.com
Case Study: Royal Bank America
Many IT service desk vendors provide both hosted and on-premise products with separate offerings that target large enterprises and smaller businesses. Help desk solutions are increasingly sold alongside other IT asset management products like security and personal computer configuration life cycle management systems. The latter are aimed at helping administrators manage any changes to hardware, software and firmware.
These markets have begun to converge to offer more all-encompassing IT service management tools. Gartner says vendors like Kaseya have become known for offering robust, enterprise-grade solutions focused on configuration management and asset monitoring with help desk capability, while others traditionally focused on ticketing and asset management, such as Numara, have branched out into offering other products for configuration and security. The enterprise vendors BMC, FrontRange Solutions, Kaseya and Numara are among providers offering lighter versions of help desk tools to small and midsize businesses.
Bank: Royal Bank America
Problem: Response times were lagging in this bank's IT department, which managed requests solely by email.
Solution: Help desk and asset management software to automate troubleshooting requests and tasks.
Using only email to manage troubleshooting for the 380 workstations, 180 end users and 55 servers at Royal Bank America in Narberth, Pa., had become untenable for the bank's two-person information technology administrative staff. Managing help desk requests through the in-box meant the duo at the $909.6 million-asset community bank could quickly become overwhelmed with emails asking for help. It also made tracking, queuing and prioritizing such problems nearly impossible. That's because the ad hoc email-based help desk method they were using was so unstructured: The one-by-one nature of email forced the two to comb through long threads from each source on every problem. So IT case histories - along with any of their nuances or similarities - became quickly buried in the serial deluge. The process made it difficult for the administrators to quickly understand and resolve problems.
"Going through emails was cumbersome; it simply took longer," says Gabriel Dudley, one of the two administrators at Royal. "It made it difficult to respond back to people in a timely manner."
Dudley began in 2010 to assess vendors in the automated help desk space. He knew Royal needed a software solution that could both track and monitor IT resources as well as organize and digitize troubleshooting capabilities, but do so inexpensively. In addition to troubleshooting via email, the bank was using spreadsheets to manually track its software and hardware inventory. Plus, Royal lacked a dedicated monitoring system that could watch servers for capacity issues and usage spikes.
“Royal ended up
choosing a help desk and
asset management
application from the
Israeli company SysAid
Technologies. Essentially,
Dudley says, the product
did what the bank
wanted it to do for a
cheaper price than other
solutions, and it was easy
to use.”
page 2
Royal ended up choosing a help desk and asset management application from the Israeli company SysAid Technologies. Essentially, Dudley says, the product did what the bank wanted it to do for a cheaper price than other solutions, and it was easy to use . "Other software platforms mainly focused on the ticketing aspect, they didn't have asset management or monitoring," he says. "There was one that could actually do a lot more than SysAid, but it was very costly - in the tens of thousands of dollars. Financially, we didn't want to go that route."
Deployed since April, the SysAid solution has enabled Royal to digitally receive, categorize and prioritize employee help requests. The user-powered system allows staff to enter a portal by double-clicking a desktop icon. In the portal, they choose a category, set a priority and enter a title or description of the issue they're having. Hitting a "submit" button creates a ticket that Royal's administrators receive. A notes field helps them track and time-stamp any work they do. There are also fields denoting status, priority, location and due date. An attachments field allows for inclusion of documents or images to aid fixes. And whenever something is done on a ticket, the system emails end users, who can see the due date for when administrators expect to fix their problems. "One ticket has the history; everything we need to look at," Dudley says. "It's definitely enabled us to respond faster."
SysAid's asset management lists the bank's hardware, software and components, and describes the space remaining on C drives and partitions. A monitoring capability comes with email alerts, which signal when a server is down or at capacity on a C drive or particular partition, or if RAM or CPU usage is peaking at a certain time.
The software comes with a knowledge base, which Royal plans to deploy as soon as Dudley and his colleague populate the tool with enough how-to documents to make it worthwhile. Employees will be able to search for and perform step-by-step fixes to the most common IT issues; they'll also be able to reset their passwords.
http://www.sysaid.com
Case Study: Royal Bank America
Many IT service desk vendors provide both hosted and on-premise products with separate offerings that target large enterprises and smaller businesses. Help desk solutions are increasingly sold alongside other IT asset management products like security and personal computer configuration life cycle management systems. The latter are aimed at helping administrators manage any changes to hardware, software and firmware.
These markets have begun to converge to offer more all-encompassing IT service management tools. Gartner says vendors like Kaseya have become known for offering robust, enterprise-grade solutions focused on configuration management and asset monitoring with help desk capability, while others traditionally focused on ticketing and asset management, such as Numara, have branched out into offering other products for configuration and security. The enterprise vendors BMC, FrontRange Solutions, Kaseya and Numara are among providers offering lighter versions of help desk tools to small and midsize businesses.
Bank: Royal Bank America
Problem: Response times were lagging in this bank's IT department, which managed requests solely by email.
Solution: Help desk and asset management software to automate troubleshooting requests and tasks.
Using only email to manage troubleshooting for the 380 workstations, 180 end users and 55 servers at Royal Bank America in Narberth, Pa., had become untenable for the bank's two-person information technology administrative staff. Managing help desk requests through the in-box meant the duo at the $909.6 million-asset community bank could quickly become overwhelmed with emails asking for help. It also made tracking, queuing and prioritizing such problems nearly impossible. That's because the ad hoc email-based help desk method they were using was so unstructured: The one-by-one nature of email forced the two to comb through long threads from each source on every problem. So IT case histories - along with any of their nuances or similarities - became quickly buried in the serial deluge. The process made it difficult for the administrators to quickly understand and resolve problems.
"Going through emails was cumbersome; it simply took longer," says Gabriel Dudley, one of the two administrators at Royal. "It made it difficult to respond back to people in a timely manner."
Dudley began in 2010 to assess vendors in the automated help desk space. He knew Royal needed a software solution that could both track and monitor IT resources as well as organize and digitize troubleshooting capabilities, but do so inexpensively. In addition to troubleshooting via email, the bank was using spreadsheets to manually track its software and hardware inventory. Plus, Royal lacked a dedicated monitoring system that could watch servers for capacity issues and usage spikes.
page 3
Royal ended up choosing a help desk and asset management application from the Israeli company SysAid Technologies. Essentially, Dudley says, the product did what the bank wanted it to do for a cheaper price than other solutions, and it was easy to use . "Other software platforms mainly focused on the ticketing aspect, they didn't have asset management or monitoring," he says. "There was one that could actually do a lot more than SysAid, but it was very costly - in the tens of thousands of dollars. Financially, we didn't want to go that route."
Deployed since April, the SysAid solution has enabled Royal to digitally receive, categorize and prioritize employee help requests. The user-powered system allows staff to enter a portal by double-clicking a desktop icon. In the portal, they choose a category, set a priority and enter a title or description of the issue they're having. Hitting a "submit" button creates a ticket that Royal's administrators receive. A notes field helps them track and time-stamp any work they do. There are also fields denoting status, priority, location and due date. An attachments field allows for inclusion of documents or images to aid fixes. And whenever something is done on a ticket, the system emails end users, who can see the due date for when administrators expect to fix their problems. "One ticket has the history; everything we need to look at," Dudley says. "It's definitely enabled us to respond faster."
SysAid's asset management lists the bank's hardware, software and components, and describes the space remaining on C drives and partitions. A monitoring capability comes with email alerts, which signal when a server is down or at capacity on a C drive or particular partition, or if RAM or CPU usage is peaking at a certain time.
The software comes with a knowledge base, which Royal plans to deploy as soon as Dudley and his colleague populate the tool with enough how-to documents to make it worthwhile. Employees will be able to search for and perform step-by-step fixes to the most common IT issues; they'll also be able to reset their passwords.
http://www.sysaid.com
SysAid Technologies Ltd. 1 Hayarden Street, P.O. Box 1142, Airport City 70100, Israel Toll Free (U.S.): 800-686-7047 • Fax (U.S.): +1 (617) 507-2559 Tel. (Israel): +972 (3) 533-3675 • Fax (Israel): +972 (3) 761-7205
Case Study: Royal Bank America
