Giva® today announced a significant new cloud product release for the industry's first visual reporting tools for information technology help desk organizations.

"The new Giva reporting module is more comprehensive and an order of magnitude easier to use when compared with FrontRange® HEAT reporting," said Juan Carlo Muro, IT Director, Sante Health System.

"The new Giva reporting module is more comprehensive and an order of magnitude easier to use when compared with FrontRange® HEAT reporting," said Juan Carlo Muro, IT Director, Sante Health System. "There is an extraordinary amount of functionality in Giva Reports that allows me to be much more productive." [Click to download the case study.]

Real-time reports can be generated within seconds even with very high volumes of complex data sets, allowing managers to instantly identify emerging trends and patterns to facilitate better and faster decision-making. Most of the real-time visual reports run in ten seconds or less with visual representation of data and drill-down capability.

The new product release features full color, high contrast charts and graphs that allow for more graphically driven data presentation to better understand relationships between all the IT department data. Metrics, business analytics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are now displayed with more graphs and charts and allow customer service and call center managers to better identify emerging problems, issues, trends and patterns so that systemic changes can be made.

This new product release significantly benefits information technology organizations which like to focus on increasing first contact resolution, increasing customer satisfaction, decreasing call volume with root cause analysis and exceeding service level agreements (SLAs). Giva's visual reporting tools make identifying trends and patterns easier and quicker and with less time building, running, sharing and reviewing reports. CIOs, IT managers and help desk managers can also finally measure differences in performance between individuals and teams with data driven objectivity to know who to reward, who to warn and who to terminate.

"Giva's reports now have significantly more visual aspects and new functionality with this new product release resulting in even faster and higher quality decision-making", said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "Our reports and dashboards are extremely easy to use and do not require a company 'report guru' as with most competitive products."

Learn more by taking a tour of Giva's help desk reports, charts and graphs or sign up for a 30 day trial of Giva.

About Giva:

Founded in 1999, Giva was among the first to provide a suite of help desk and customer service/call center applications architected for the cloud. Now, with hundreds of customer driven releases, the Giva Service Management™ Suite delivers an intuitive, easy-to-use design that can be deployed in just days and requires only one hour of training. Giva's robust, fast and painless reporting/analytics/KPIs quickly measure team productivity, responsiveness and customer satisfaction resulting in faster and higher quality decision-making. Customization and configuration are all point and click with no programming or consultants required to deliver a substantially lower total cost of ownership. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

Giva® today announced a significant new cloud product release for the industry's first visual reporting tools for customer service and call center organizations. Real-time reports can be generated within seconds even with very high volumes of complex data sets, allowing managers to instantly identify emerging trends and patterns to facilitate better and faster decision-making. Most of the real-time visual reports run in ten seconds or less with visual representation of data and drill-down capability.

"We used to spend over 24 hours per month working with the reports in Salesforce.com® Service Cloud to extract data. With Giva, we spend about 15 minutes per month and the information quality is superior," said Chris Jerry, EDIMS Support Center Manager.

"The new Giva real-time reports make us 30% more productive and have dramatically decreased the amount of time required to generate and distribute quality reports to the executive team," said Chris Jerry, EDIMS Support Center Manager. "We used to spend over 24 hours per month working with the reports in Salesforce.com® Service Cloud to extract data. With Giva, we spend about 15 minutes per month generating customer service reports and the information quality is superior. Giva is the 'Apple Computer' of cloud customer service applications." [Click to download the case study.]

The new product release features full color, high contrast charts and graphs that allow for more graphically driven data presentation to better understand relationships between all the call center data. Metrics, business analytics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are now displayed with more graphs and charts and allow customer service and call center managers to better identify emerging problems, issues, trends and patterns so that systemic changes can be made.

This new product release significantly benefits customer service and call center organizations which like to focus on increasing first contact resolution, increasing customer satisfaction, decreasing call volume with root cause analysis and exceeding service level agreements (SLAs). Giva's visual reporting tools make identifying trends and patterns easier and quicker and with less time building, running, sharing and reviewing reports. Customer service managers can also finally measure differences in performance between individuals and teams with data driven objectivity to know who to reward, who to warn and who to terminate.

"Giva's reports now have significantly more visual aspects and new functionality with this new product release resulting in even faster and higher quality decision-making", said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "Our reports and dashboards are extremely easy to use and do not require a company "report guru" as with most competitive products."

Learn more by taking a tour of Giva's customer service/call center reports, charts and graphs or sign up for a 30 day trial of Giva.

About Giva:

Founded in 1999, Giva was among the first to provide a suite of help desk and customer service/call center applications architected for the cloud. Now, with hundreds of customer driven releases, the Giva Service Management™ Suite delivers an intuitive, easy-to-use design that can be deployed in just days and requires only one hour of training. Giva's robust, fast and painless reporting/analytics/KPIs quickly measure team productivity, responsiveness and customer satisfaction resulting in faster and higher quality decision-making. Customization and configuration are all point and click with no programming or consultants required to deliver a substantially lower total cost of ownership. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

Giva® has announced a new webinar series on mistakes to avoid when buying any software or cloud services. Companies interested in purchasing software or cloud services (such as IT help desk or customer service solutions) encounter a myriad of problems and obstacles during the purchase process. Giva's webinar builds a foundation of understanding including all the internal issues to consider and well as the external process of engaging with vendors.

"We listened to many companies struggle with the purchase process and they asked us for our help. This webinar is a distillation of lessons learned over a decade," said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc.

The webinars provide practical "how to" advice to assist in becoming a more informed buyer and enable companies to make a more rigorous and objective comparison of vendors based upon a prioritized list of feature requirements. The webinar also provides education on how to lead the vendor qualification process with expertise and confidence. Effectively coaching a team on how to shortlist the right vendors for a rigorous vetting process is also discussed as well as insights about how to negotiate a better license agreement.

The webinar helps avoid mistakes that even the most experienced professionals make that cost a lot of time and money. Evaluation teams and senior executives making important business decisions can now approach the purchase of any software including IT help desk and customer service cloud services in a much more rigorous and analytical manner.

"Giva has literally worked with thousands of IT and customer service professionals since 1999," said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "We listened to many companies struggle with the purchase process and they asked us for our help. This webinar is a distillation of lessons learned over a decade. It provides practical answers and a 'how to' approach to overcoming all the challenges of purchasing any new software or cloud services."

This webinar series also has eight related whitepapers now available for download:

• Do Check Signers Have Significant Pain?
• Are Funds Approved and Set Aside?
• Learn Latest Help Desk and Customer Best Practices
• Determine Problems with the Current Call Tracking System
• Document Feature Needs/Requirements
• Ask Vendors Tough Questions Early and Often
• Compare Total Cost of Ownership of All Vendors
• Key License Agreement Terms

Click on the link to sign up for the IT Help Desk webinar or Customer Service webinar and read quotes from very satisfied attendees.

About Giva:

Founded in 1999, Giva was among the first companies to provide a suite of applications specifically architected for the public cloud. Now, with over a decade of refinements including thousands of enhancements, the Giva Service Management™ Suite is the most customer feedback driven cloud computing suite for the ITIL Help Desk, Customer Service/Call Center and Service Desk. Visual reporting, management dashboards and a radically intuitive service request design, make the Giva Service Management™ Suite highly differentiated from all other solutions. Customizations are all point and click with no programming or consulting necessary so Giva delivers a substantially lower total cost of ownership solution. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

Overhead Savings Told by the Volume

For every service request entered by a customer you have the potential to save two minutes and forty-nine
seconds! You say, "OK, but how about when a customer does not enter the correct information or is vague and
we have to call them back". This is a significant problem when they leave a voice mail or they send an email
because of the time lag between when they contact you and when you pick up the message or email. However,
with a Web submission there can be great savings in time. We need to assume that your problem management
system immediately and automatically notifies you of a Web submission and that you have good support
processes in place. My experience has been that when you immediately call the customer to thank them they
will still be at their desk. This is a very good practice to introduce this new process to your customers. They will
be surprised at your response and will gladly give you any clarifying information. It is also a great time for one-on-one training on how to submit the perfect service request.

How to Successfully Implement Customer Logging

1. Know your current state. You should first benchmark your current support center workload.
? Numbers of service requests by the various submit methods (by month).
? Length of time that it takes to document a single service request by submit method.
2. Develop a process for providing superior service to Web submissions.
3. Develop a marketing plan to encourage your customers to try out the Web.
4. Dedicate resources to processing Web submissions.
5. Track progress and report at least monthly.

Since we have already discussed methodology for determining current state, we will now discuss the other
requirements.

Develop a process for providing superior service to Web submissions. Ultimately, customers must feel that they are receiving better service when they submit via the web than any other way. I have interviewed hundreds of customers in many companies.

One of the questions that I ask is "what do you want from a support center?" Here are the most frequent
answers in the order of importance:
1. "I want someone to be there when I call."
2. "I want to know that they have heard me and that they understand my request."
3. "I want to be treated with respect."
4. "I want to have a knowledgeable person make sure that my request is resolved."
5. "I want to know when I can expect resolution."
If the support center cannot meet the customers' needs when they submit over the web, then they will not use it and go back to their old ways of wanting to use the phone.

There are two processes that I have witnessed that are critical success factors: (1) program the problem
management system so that it notifies the support center every time a new web submission arrives, (2) who ever takes the request should personally call the customer back immediately. I have seen this become a game for the support center. In the beginning, this is not a great burden. Remember that you are saving almost three minutes per web request. This call back has great success because almost 100% of the time the customer is there.

This addresses the first need the customer has as stated above ("I want someone to be there when I call.").

This will relieve a great fear that they are just submitting into a black hole and that no one will respond. The phone
conversation can go something like: "This is the support center calling and I wanted to thank you for using our
web service. I have your request here. Do you have a moment to go through it with me to make sure that I
understand it?" This addresses the second and third need (I want to be heard and treated with respect.). By
simply asking for clarification the customer is learning how to better document the next time. The support
person then can conclude by stating what is going to be done. On easy requests the customer could be told that
they have already resolved the issue or that they were working on it and it would be done in a few minutes. The
customer still gets a feeling of being taken care of (the need for a knowledgeable person to resolve it) when the
support center says that they have already sent the request off to the appropriate group and that they should
expect it to be resolved in a certain amount of time.

Market your new service to your customers

Your customers do not like to be surprised. When you make any changes in the way that you provide support,
let your customers know well in advance of the change. Three months is an adequate amount of lead time. A
well written email explaining the service and benefits to the customer is all that is required. Send it out three
months before, then two months before and then once a week before the launch date.
When marketing your new web service, make sure you stress that all your old services are still in effect. Make
sure that your customers know that they can still call you any time. In fact, you
want them to call you for all emergency (Severity 1 and 2) issues.

If you don't get this point across, then your customers may feel that this is another way that you are trying to
avoid talking to them. The point to stress is that you are adding a service (another way to submit a service
request) and not taking away a service.

Dedicate resources to web service

When you turn on the new web service, you need to be certain that you are ready for it. Web service requests
must be given priority. After phone calls, make sure that the web requests are quickly addressed. That might
mean that you don't answer your emails as fast. Make sure that the web service is covered throughout your
normal support hours. Several successful implementations have taken their staff that were on phones and
assigned them to handle the web requests when they came in. Since volume at the beginning was not great, this was an easy change. Later when the volume increased, they assigned staff to the web the same way that they assigned to the phones. One company found that they could only have a person on the web service for an hour at a time because of the stress in handling so many requests. Just be ready to dedicate resources in an organized manner.

Track web submission trends

It is important to know where you are spending your time. That is why I suggested that you start with a
benchmark from which to measure. You will probably find that initially those customers that usually sent
emails will switch to the web. Those that use to phone will eventually switch to the Web. Knowing the change
will help you adjust your scheduling of resources. Below is an actual chart of the initial phases of a web
implementation. Note that for the first six months there was a one-to-one correlation between the number of
web submissions and emails. After six months customers began shifting from phoning the support center to
submitting over the web.

Conclusion

The benefits to both the support center and to customers are significant when customers favor web submissions
over other forms of submitting service requests. In order to successfully convince customers to switch the
support center must have strong processes in place. The support center must also market the benefits to their
customers and be dedicated to providing superior service to those customers who submit web requests.

See https://www.givainc.com/resources/wp/service-requests-customer-logging-successfully-implement-benefits/ to download whitepaper

Why should customers log their service requests?

How can you prepare an economic analysis of the benefits?

There are many myths about letting customers into your problem management system. I often hear support
managers say that their customers won't take the time. "Our customers would rather call us than enter their
own calls." I also hear them say that their customers are not capable of entering the correct information and
support would just have to call the customer anyway." It is my experience from working with many companies,
that the perceptions do not fit reality. What I will try to do in this paper is to present the advantages to customer logging and tips to make it successful.

What is Customer Logging?

Only a few service event management systems available today have a customer interface into the system.
Usually these take the form of a web application. Whether client or web-based, the customer interface is
usually a much simpler version than the full-blown application. In all cases, the customer documents what their
problem or request is and submits their request receiving a confirmation and service event tracking number.
Some applications also allow the customer to enter their own severity level, pick the Nature of Request
category, attach an asset, and/or attached a document.

Advantages

24x7 Coverage for Customers
Most support organizations have limited coverage. A typical day may be 10 hours a day five days a week.
Who covers after hours and on the weekend? Often there is a duty person that has a pager for emergencies.
Without anyone manning the phones, your customers working late, or on weekends or from home cannot make
non-emergency requests. When you allow your customers to log their own requests, it is like having a 24x7
support desk without the expense.

Support Cost Savings
Support Front Line Logging Overhead
When I work with various companies, one measurement that I always ask for is the length of time that it takes
for the support front line to log the basic information into the problem management system. Most managers do
not know how long this takes so I take my stop watch and observe a number of entries. I find that on average it
takes about three minutes and nineteen seconds. This is only the basic information. This does not include any
diagnosis or resolution.

I timed phone call logging, voice mail logging, email logging, Fax and Web. Voice mail is by far the most
inefficient because the support agent usually has to replay the message several times to make sure that it is
recorded correctly. Emails usually can simply be cut and pasted. There have been a few support organizations
that take Fax requests. These are all manual and take the longest.
For the various submit methods I have also tried to measure how many times and the length of time customers
are called back because the information they provided is not sufficient. I have not been able to accurately
document this aspect, but the amount of time and effort is very significant once the game of phone tag begins.

Web-based Customer Logging Overhead

When the customer submits their own service request, there is still some overhead required by the support
center. They have to (1) verify customer name and location information, (2) read and understand the service
request documentation, (3) reclassify the Nature of Request, (4) verify the severity level, and (5) assign it to the
correct service group. My observation is that this overhead time takes less than thirty seconds and that includes
calling the customer to verify information or to just say thanks.

Giva has a strong focus on hospitals and healthcare organizations.

The American Hospital Association conducts an annual survey of hospitals in the United States. The definitive source for aggregate hospital data and trend analysis, AHA Hospital Statistics includes current and historical data on utilization, personnel, revenue, expenses, managed care contracts, community health indicators, physician models, and much more.

AHA Hospital Statistics is published annually by Health Forum, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association. Additional details on AHA Hospital Statistics and other Health Forum data products are available at sponsor.aha.org or click on www.ahaonlinestore.com

Total Number of All U.S. Registered * Hospitals
5,708
Number of U.S. Community ** Hospitals
4,897
Number of Nongovernment Not-for-Profit Community Hospitals
2,913
Number of Investor-Owned (For-Profit) Community Hospitals
873
Number of State and Local Government Community Hospitals
1,111
Number of Federal Government Hospitals
213
Number of Nonfederal Psychiatric Hospitals
444
Number of Nonfederal Long Term Care Hospitals
136
Number of Hospital Units of Institutions
(Prison Hospitals, College Infirmaries, Etc.)
18
Total Staffed Beds in All U.S. Registered* Hospitals
945,199
Staffed Beds in Community** Hospitals
800,892
Total Admissions in All U.S. Registered* Hospitals
37,120,387
Admissions in Community** Hospitals
35,345,986
Total Expenses for All U.S. Registered* Hospitals
$641,123,636,000
Expenses for Community** Hospitals
$583,252,288,000
Number of Rural Community** Hospitals
1,997
Number of Urban Community** Hospitals
2,900
Number of Community Hospitals in a System ***
2,730
Number of Community Hospitals in a Network ****

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

Giva® reduces the complexity of the software purchase process with its new series of complimentary vendor-independent white papers. These white papers inform and educate professionals such as CFOs, CIOs, VPs and Directors of Customer Service and Information Technology.

"These white papers are a distillation of lessons learned over a decade. They provide practical answers and a 'how to' approach to overcoming all the challenges of purchasing new software," said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc.

Customers interested in purchasing IT help desk or customer service cloud software encounter a myriad of problems and obstacles during the purchase process. Giva's white papers build a foundation of understanding including all the internal issues to consider and well as the external process of engaging with vendors.

These white papers provide practical "how to" advice to assist in becoming a more informed buyer. With the tools provided, companies can make a more rigorous and objective comparison of vendors based upon a prioritized list of feature requirements. The white papers also provide education on how to lead the vendor qualification process with expertise and confidence. Effectively coaching a team on how to shortlist the right vendors for a rigorous vetting process is also discussed as well as insights about how to negotiate a better license agreement. The white papers help avoid mistakes that even the most experienced professionals make that cost a lot of time and money. Evaluation teams and senior executives making important business decisions can now approach the purchase of IT help desk and customer service cloud software in a much more rigorous and analytical manner.

This white paper series is now available for download:

• Do Check Signers Have Significant Pain?
• Are Funds Approved and Set Aside?
• Learn Latest Help Desk and Customer Best Practices
• Determine Problems with the Current Call Tracking System
• Document Feature Needs/Requirements
• Ask Vendors Tough Questions Early and Often
• Compare Total Cost of Ownership of All Vendors
• Key License Agreement Terms

This white paper series is now available for download:

• Part 1 - Ten Tough Questions to Better Qualify Any Software or Cloud Vendor
• Part 2 - Twenty Tough Questions to Better Qualify Any Cloud Vendor
• Part 3 - Ten More Tough Questions to Better Qualify Any Software or Cloud Vendor

"Giva has literally worked with thousands of IT and customer service professionals since 1999", said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "We listened to many companies struggle with the purchase process and they asked us for our help. These white papers are a distillation of lessons learned over a decade. They provide practical answers and a 'how to' approach to overcoming all the challenges of purchasing new software."

About Giva:

Founded in 1999, Giva was among the first companies to provide a suite of applications specifically architected for the public cloud. Now, with over a decade of refinements including thousands of enhancements, the Giva Service Management™ Suite is the most customer feedback driven cloud computing suite for the ITIL Help Desk, Customer Service/Call Center and Service Desk. Visual reporting, management dashboards and a radically intuitive service request design, make the Giva Service Management™ Suite highly differentiated from all other solutions. Customizations are all point and click with no programming or consulting necessary so Giva delivers a substantially lower total cost of ownership solution. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

PR contact:

Email: [email protected]
Phone: 408.260.9000

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.

Problem Management

Problem Management helps ensure the stability of IT infrastructure and IT services.

By creating a Problem Record for any new kind of Incident and linking all Incidents to a Problem Record, the Giva IT help desk solution allows you to manage, control, and obtain information about the three major elements of Problem Management: problem control, error control, and proactive problem management. With the Giva IT help desk software, you can link multiple Incidents to the same Problem Record. The ultimate objective is that all Problems are linked to a Known Error.

Proactive Problem Management has two aspects. The first aspect is identifying potential Problems before they manifest as Incidents and making this information available to Incident Management. The second aspect is a continuation of the first. In this case, Problem Management identifies the Known Error and takes steps to correct it before customers call to report it.

With more than 70 pre-defined, configurable reports and root-cause analysis, Giva eHelpDesk assists IT in identifying and documenting potential Problems so they can be resolved by Problem Management.

Incident Management

Incident Management provides continuity to customers by restoring services as quickly as possible, provides accessibility of the Service Desk for all users, and ensures acceptability of its services. The focus of Incident Management is on continuity and thereby allowing customers to resume business as quickly as possible.

By providing rich text formatting of requests, with the ability to attach screen shots and files to Incident requests, Giva eHelpDesk is your one solution for tracking Incidents, responses, and resolutions. In addition, to ensure that no Incident falls through the cracks, it has an automatic escalation rules engine. Also, to ensure each Incident is handled with consistency, it has an automatic reminder of questions to ask, scripts, and standard operating procedures.

Service Level Management

Service Level Management (SLM) establishes a closely monitored agreement about the optimal level of IT service between provider and customer.

Giva eHelpDesk provides tools to assist with implementing the ITIL Service Level Management (SLM) process, which entails negotiating, defining, contracting, monitoring, and reviewing the levels of customer service. The Giva IT help desk solution also provides a business rules engine for escalation notifications to help ensure Problems and Incidents are addressed within service level agreements (SLAs). With extensive reports, Giva eHelpDesk also helps you monitor and review the actual service levels achieved against their SLA targets.