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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Giva Services Overview
Giva Professional Services Group delivers premier implementation, technical support,
and educational services to our customers around the world. By providing tools and services
that facilitate your success, the Giva Professional Services Group enables you to maximize the
return on investment from your Giva solutions.
Giva’s comprehensive service offerings include:
- Giva Professional Services –
Provides the industry expertise and technical excellence to help customers successfully plan, design, configure, implement,
deploy, and upgrade Giva Service Management solutions.
- Giva Customer Support –
Provides world-class support services employing the
Giva Service Management Suite™, as well as
state-of-the-art support best practices, to ensure the prompt, accurate resolution of all customer service requests.
- Giva Education Services –
Delivers proactive education so Giva customers quickly acquire the requisite knowledge and skills to successfully
use their Giva solution.
These organizations work closely to implement Giva’s comprehensive service methodology and to ensure
100 percent customer satisfaction with Giva and its products.
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