Giva Blog Categories : Hospitals

Read about Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ITIL Change Management in the cloud and how it is changing the software industry. This is a case study of a customer using Giva eChangeManager to lower labor and auditing costs and increase IT infrastructure uptime

Westway Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: WWAY) is a leading provider of bulk liquid storage throughout North America and Europe. Westway operates an extensive global network of 54 operating facilities providing 348 million gallons of storage capacity and produces 1.7 million tons of liquid feed supplements annually. Giva eChangeManager™ was deployed to address the company's need for a change management application easily accessible from anywhere in the world and that was Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) compliant.

Results:

• 70% decrease in labor costs by tracking IT changes with Giva
• 80% decrease in IT auditing costs estimated for next year's public accounting firm audit
• Significantly increased IT infrastructure uptime
• Real-time Trend Reports, Dashboards, Charts, and Metrics, which enable visibility of all global Requests for Change
• An affordable and easy to customize solution that is ITIL and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOXs) compliant
• 100% uptime using Giva's cloud computing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) eChangeManager

Quotes:

"When comparing all of our IT vendors, Giva's commitment and passion in maintaining its products and providing excellent customer service is "best in class" and clearly distinguished above the rest of our vendors."

Peter Griffiths, IT Director

Read case study on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Change Management in the Cloud

Giva's data centers are SAS 70 certified. Is your SaaS IT help desk or customer service vendor?

SAS 70 (the Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70) defines the standards an auditor must employ in order to assess the contracted internal controls of a service organization. Service organizations, such as hosted data centers, insurance claims processors and credit processing companies, provide outsourcing services that affect the operation of the contracting enterprise. The SAS 70 was developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) as a simplification of a set of criteria for auditing standards originally defined in 1988.

Under SAS 70, auditor reports are classified as either Type I or Type II. In a Type I report, the auditor evaluates the efforts of a service organization at the time of audit to prevent accounting inconsistencies, errors and misrepresentation. The auditor also evaluates the likelihood that those efforts will produce the desired future results. A Type II report includes the same information as that contained in a Type I report; in addition, the auditor attempts to determine the effectiveness of agreed-on controls since their implementation. Type II reports also incorporate data compiled during a specific time period, usually a minimum of six months.

SAS 70 reports are commissioned at the request of either a service organization (the company) or the user organization (customers). It is in the service organization's best interests to provide consistent service auditor's reports. Positive independent reports build a customer's trust and confidence in the service organization and satisfy any concerns. Furthermore, Type II reports identify any operational areas that need improvement. A lack of current reports, on the other hand, may generate multiple audit requests from the user organization and these audits can be costly for the service organization.

Click for more information on Giva's SAS 70 certified data centers

We are talking about how to start your organization down the path of creating a knowledge base for

You will need a knowledge base process-change management plan because you are asking people to do their jobs differently. The plan specifies how you will gain acceptance of knowledge management within the organization. Let us say you are a service desk manager and you measure your employees by call handling time and number of cases closed. Now you are going to be asking them to use knowledgebase on every call they take, every e-mail they answer, and so you are asking them to change the way they earn their living on a day-to-day basis. You are going to also ask them to share their knowledge through creating knowledge records. If you do not also make changes to their performance reviews and compensation, then there will be friction because you're asking them to do one thing but you are judging them by another set of rules. As part of the overall plan you need to update job descriptions, feedback sessions and performance reviews to reflect the new workflow. Neglecting to make these changes is likely to create friction.

See https://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software/ for Screen shots and Report examples.

See https://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software/ for a White Paper on Knowledge Base ROI.

Knowledge Management is a discipline

Many people think knowledge management is just software but it is much more than that; knowledge management is a discipline.

Knowledge Management is a discipline that takes a comprehensive, systematic approach to the information assets of an organization by identifying, capturing, collecting, organizing, indexing, storing, integrating, retrieving and sharing them. Such assets include (a) the explicit knowledge such as databases, documents, environmental knowledge, policies, procedures and organizational culture; and (b) the tacit knowledge of its employees, their expertise and their practical work experience. It strives to make the collective knowledge information and experience of the organization available to individual employees for their use and to motivate them to contribute their knowledge to the collective assets.

See https://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software/ for Screen shots and Report examples.

See https://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software/ for a White Paper on Knowledge Base ROI.

What are the Challenges of Knowledge base?

• Getting employees on board
• Not allowing technology to dictate KM
• Having a specific business goal
• Realizing that KM is not static and constantly needs care
• Knowing that not all information is knowledge

Knowledge Management is not a technology. It is a methodology.

See https://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software/ for Screen shots and Report examples.

See https://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software/ for a White Paper on Knowledge Base ROI.

Unfortunately, there is no universal definition of knowledge management (KM), just as there is no agreement as to what constitutes knowledge in the first place. For this reason, it is best to think of KM in the broadest context. KM is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, generating value from such assets involves sharing them among employees, departments and even with other companies in an effort to create best practices. KM is not technology. It is a process. IT often facilitates KM.

What benefits can companies expect from KM?

Some benefits of KM correlate directly to bottom-line savings, while others are more difficult to quantify. In today's information-driven economy, companies uncover the most opportunities — and ultimately derive the most value — from intellectual rather than physical assets. To get the most value from a company's intellectual assets, KM practitioners maintain that knowledge must be shared and serve as the foundation for collaboration. Yet, better collaboration is not an end in itself. Consequently, an effective KM program should help a company do one or more of the following:

+ Foster innovation by encouraging the free flow of ideas

+ Improve customer service by streamlining response time

+ Boost revenues by getting products and services to market faster

+ Enhance employee retention rates by recognizing the value of employees' knowledge and rewarding them for it

+ Streamline operations and reduce costs by eliminating redundant or unnecessary processes

These are just some relevant examples. A creative approach to KM can result in improved efficiency, higher productivity and increased revenues in practically any business function.

See https://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software/ for Screen shots and Report examples.

See https://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software/ for a White Paper on Knowledge Base ROI.

Who should I reward, who should I warn and who should I terminate?

C level executives focus on leverage points to make changes or influence that have a high payback for every unit of effort and time. Said another way..they want a big bang for buck of their efforts so they look for high leverage activities that have a big impact.

If you run an internal IT help desk….for example, a law firm or a hospital or other technology driven entity..…you have significant influence on the productivity of other internal people that the company pays a lot of money to show up every day and produce and generate revenue.…that's a leverage point.

If you run a customer service operation ….you have a lot of influence whether customers will buy more products/services…it's a leverage point. Anybody your company lets talk to customers is the face of the company and in a very influential position. Sure sales people generate revenue but customer service folks keep the customers coming back with their checkbooks….or not coming back.

C levels want well-oiled machines…and they know that the only way to achieve this is to have the absolute most talented employees.  The best and brightest leaders are fair and decent people. They want to reward, warn and terminate using objective data (i.e. metrics), but they rarely get it because it's often too hard to get this kind of information quickly from call tracking systems.

See examples of the kind of information that you can use to reward, warn and terminate:

IT Help Desk Reports with Metrics, Business Analytics & Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

or

Customer Service/Call Center Reports with Metrics, Business Analytics & Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are important for CIOs and VPs of Customer Service because:

1. Measure Performance- Team and individual.

2. Benchmarking against Industry for continuous improvement.

3. Financial…for budgeting and pay/incentive plans. Need to understand workloads…Add and subtract headcount and technology expenses. Tie your contribution to revenue as much as possible.

4. Marketing..With 17% unemployment (don't believe government numbers), you have to show your company that you're smart, competent and deserve your paycheck every 2 weeks! Keep your resources…make a business case to get more resources…no better way than with metrics…objective data will rule many decisions made in today economic environment.

See more at:

IT Help Desk Reports with Metrics, Business Analytics & Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

or

Customer Service/Call Center Reports with Metrics, Business Analytics & Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Giva® announces the industry's first visual reporting tools for Information Technology Help Desk/Service Desks. Real-time reports with high volumes of complex data sets can be generated within seconds, 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.

"Giva's new visual reporting tools have allowed us to reduce the amount of time we spend running daily, weekly and monthly reports by approximately 35%", said Steven Marks, Chief Information Officer, Sills Cummis & Gross, a top 200 law firm. "This translates directly into lower labor costs and higher quality information. We can see our IT service metrics more visually and with detailed granularity."

The new reporting tools feature full color, high contrast charts and graphs that allow for more graphically driven data presentation to better understand relationships between all the call data. Metrics, business analytics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are now displayed with more graphs and charts and allow CIOs, IT directors and IT help desk managers to better identify emerging problems, issues, trends and patterns so that systemic changes can be made. Giva's visual reporting tools are available for all of Giva's ITIL compliant modules including IT help desk, problem management, incident management, knowledge base, asset management, IT change management and software license compliance.

This release significantly benefits law firms, hospitals, healthcare organizations and professional service firms 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 and reviewing reports. CIOs and IT leaders 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.

"Reporting and dashboards are significant Giva differentiators and areas in which Giva will continue to provide industry innovation", said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "This new release continues to set us apart and further establishes Giva as an ITIL compliant IT help desk, knowledge base, change management and asset management industry leader".

Learn more by taking a tour of Giva's IT help desk reports, charts and graphs or sign-up for a no obligation 30 day trial of Giva.

About Giva:
Giva is an award winning provider of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) Web-based ITIL Help Desk, Customer Service/Call Center and Service Desk cloud based computing services. Giva's visual reporting tools, management dashboards and intuitive design, make it very powerful and at the same time very easy-to use. Customizations are all point and click (i.e no programming necessary) and along with the cost and quick deployment advantages of SaaS, the result is a dramatically lower total cost of ownership when compared to other products that require programmers and trained consultants. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

About Sills Cummis & Gross:
Founded in 1971, Sills Cummis & Gross has established an outstanding global reputation. Our growth has been made possible by a large national client roster and an ever-expanding list of international corporations. The Firm was featured in Chambers USA Guide to America's Leading Lawyers for Business which ranked the Real Estate, Bankruptcy and Health Care practices first in New Jersey and the Corporate, Litigation, and Employment and Labor practices in the top three in the State in the 2010 edition.

On a national level, our lawyers represent companies from Fortune 500 to emerging growth. On an international level, we are frequently called upon and have been focusing on cross-border transactions with non-U.S. companies doing business in the U.S.