Do check signers have significant pain?
- Understand pain points of CIO/VP Customer Service
- Significant pain must exist for senior management to sign a check
- Giva White Papers will help you "listen" for pain statements
- Tell vendors your pain. Otherwise, they will ignore you
Are funds approved and set aside?
- Check in with CIO or VP Customer Service
- Don't invest time until given iron clad assurance that funds are available
- Determine what you are already paying for application maintenance
- Find a cloud based replacement product for less money than annual maintenance
Learn latest IT service desk or customer service best practices.
- Prepare to ask vendors tough questions with confidence
- Prod and poke at vendors...you lead the questioning
- Acquire best practices fluency: first call resolution, service level agreement compliance, root cause analysis, customer satisfaction surveys, KPIs/metrics, dashboards, etc.
- Subscribe to Giva Blog & review Giva White Papers. Join "Linked In" groups, industry associations and user groups
What are problems with current call tracking system?
- Hire consultants/technical experts, if necessary
- Call vendor CEO; list of issues ready to send.
- Proposal to fix? Cost, timeline, guarantees
- Is fixing less expensive vs. buying a new application
What are feature needs/requirements?
- Obtain feedback from all stakeholders; prioritize the list
- Use Giva's Needs Assessment Tool as a starting point
- Check signers like a rigorous quantitative analysis
- Share requirements openly with short list of vendors
Ask vendors tough questions early and often.
- Early on share complex "must have" & "deal killer" requirements to eliminate vendors
- Ask for an estimated price quote. Is it in your budget ball park?
- Ask for customer case studies and references
- Poke and prod, listen carefully, get it all in writing
What is the total cost of ownership (TCO) of all vendors?
- Calculate TCO of all vendors for applies-to-apples comparison
- Acquisition costs only 30% of TCO over 5 years according to Gartner Group
- Ongoing lifetime costs vary significantly between vendors
- Compare cloud vs. on premise hosted software licenses
What are important license agreement terms?
- What happens if stop paying annual maintenance?
- Arbitration clause - inexpensive means of recourse
- SLAs for product support & reports to measure SLA compliance
- Termination clauses
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Change Management Software
Giva eChangeManager
The ITIL® (IT Infrastructure Library®) compliant Giva eChangeManager™ is the most powerful and at the same time the most easy-to-use change management application.
Giva eChangeManager™ is cloud based and ITIL compliant and provides policy enforcement, process management, and planning capabilities that help you quickly and consistently implement IT changes. It automates and streamlines IT change management, while minimizing the risk of IT changes and delivers an intuitive, easy-to-use design that can be deployed in just days and requires only one hour of training.
Screenshots
This demonstration shows you how IT professionals can use Giva eChangeManager to propose change requests, obtain approval, communicate with other service groups, document implementation, test and back out plans and generate reports.
Benefits
A 100 percent Web-native, ITIL-compliant change management solution,
Giva eChangeManager:
- Automates the submission,
tracking and approval process for IT changes
- Increases visibility
into IT changes before implementation
- Boosts cross-functional communication
with real-time reporting
- Increases employee productivity
through higher infrastructure uptime
- Enhances IT department productivity
by providing automated workflow and escalation
- Decreases support costs
by lowering change-related failures
- Reduces support calls
by increasing the number of successful changes
- Speeds business decisions
by delivering accurate, real-time reports
- Minimizes business risk
by ensuring Sarbanes-Oxley regulatory compliance through audit trails
of IT-related changes
- Identifies opportunities for
business process improvement by providing trend analysis
reporting for successful and unsuccessful IT-related changes
IT Change Management and The Sarbanes-Oxley Act
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requires that management must accept
responsibility for the effectiveness of internal controls, evaluate
the effectiveness using suitable control criteria, support this evaluation
with sufficient evidence, and retain independent auditors to attest
to these controls.
SOX directly affects IT departments since they manage, perform changes,
and provide documentation for corporate financial systems.
By providing a centralized record of incidents, requests for change
(RFCs), and changes to financial systems, business applications, networks,
and databases, The Giva change management software assists IT departments
comply with the strict Sarbanes-Oxley requirements.
Features
Giva eChangeManager features:
- Centralized IT change schedule
- Best practices and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
compliant work flow process for routing IT changes
- Customizable fields, screens, options, and business
rules engines
- Option to expedite routine changes
- File attachments can be stored and linked to change
records
- Automatically notifies Change Manager and Change
Advisory Board according to rules
- Notifications to users via pager, email, cell phone,
or PDA
- Thirteen pre-defined, customizable reports offer
easy access to IT change-related information
- Seamless integration with Giva eHelpDesk™
- ITIL-compliant
ITIL®
The IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®) encompasses the following
six areas:
- Problem Management
- Incident Management
- Change Management
- Configuration Management
- Service Level Management
- Release Management
To gain a further understanding of ITIL, download a Giva
ITIL whitepaper.
Giva eChangeManager specifically addresses Change Management and
Release Management.
Change Management
Change Management ensures that the IT organization uses standardized
methods and techniques for efficient and prompt handling of all changes
in order to prevent change-related Incidents.
The Giva change management software allows users to raise Requests
for Change (RFCs) to Change Management with the information of Known
Errors so that the Change and Release processes can correct the errors,
improve the infrastructure, and eliminate further Incidents.
Based on industry best practices, Giva eChangeManager provides control
and management of the complete lifecycle of RFCs, including:
- Acceptance
- Classification
- Approval and Planning
- Coordination
- Evaluation
Changes in the IT infrastructure may arise reactively in response
to Problems or externally imposed requirements. Changes may also arise
from the desire to improve IT efficiency and effectiveness. In addition,
Changes can arise from new business initiatives or from programs,
projects, or service improvement initiatives.
Giva eChangeManager can help you:
- Ensure standardized methods, processes and procedures
are used for all changes
- Facilitate efficient and prompt handling of all
changes
- Maintain the proper balance between the need for
change and the potential detrimental impact of changes
The Giva change management software assists the Change Management
team to approve and control changes to all Configuration Items (CIs)
in the live environment. Giva eChangeManager assists the Change Management
team to:
- Accept and classify RFCs
- Assess the impact, cost, benefit, and risk of proposed
changes
- Develop business justification and obtain approval
- Manage and coordinate change implementation
- Monitor and report on the implementation
- Review and close RFCs
Release Management
Release Management protects the live environment by designing, building,
and configuring the releases of many RFCs, ensuring that all the changes
work properly when combined in the live environment.
Using Giva eChangeManager, your Change Management team can build
and test all changes to one RFC at a time and then pass the RFC to
the Release Management process.
The Giva change management software assists your Release Management
team to determine the best method for distributing the release, as
well as helping them communicate, provide training for, and document
the release. In addition, Giva eChangeManager allows Release Management
to document a fully tested back out plan.
To close a RFC after confirming the success of the release, Release
Management authorizes the updating of the CMDB by Configuration Management
by using Giva eAssetManager and Giva eSoftwareManager.
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