Giva Blog

Organizations in the healthcare field will be familiar with HIPAA, formally known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Signed into law in 1996, it sets a national standard for protecting personal health information (PHI). It ensures that patients know how their information is stored and shared through consultation and consent. According to the HIPAA Journal, in the twelve months leading up to October 2023, there were 678 reported data breaches that contained 500 or more records across the country. There is room for improvement in protecting sensitive PHI, especially when dealing with large databases.

[Read More]

The ITIL Guru sat at his desk, looking over the latest additions in the Continuous Improvement Register (CIR). As a CIR review board member, he liked what he saw -- more IT staff contributing improvement ideas, making him feel good about the progress. The phone rings.

"ITIL Guru. How may I assist you today?"

"Hi Guru, this is Betty. I want your help. The CIO asked me to come to her office tomorrow. She wants me to take over the role of practice owner for Service Level Management (SLM). Since the previous owner did not communicate very often to IT, I don't know what the practice does or accomplishes. Can you give me your expert opinion about the role of SLM?"

"Betty, I am always happy to help explain ITIL.

[Read More]

Change management is the structured process of guiding people, teams, and organizations from their current way of working to a new one. It focuses on the human side of change, such as reducing resistance, building adoption, and making sure improvements actually stick long after a project goes live. In IT, that process is formalized through defined roles and responsibilities. Knowing who owns what is the difference between a change that is effected cleanly versus one that creates chaos. Our expert in the following has a way of making that clarity concrete...

[Read More]

The IT Infrastructure Library, abbreviated as ITIL®, is a library of guidelines that were first introduced by the British government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) during the 1980s that outlines a complete list of best practices to be adopted for delivering IT services. The guiding principles listed in ITIL have undergone several revisions over time after they were first introduced and currently include five books, each dealing with different aspects of IT services, with one unit of the ITIL System focusing on the 7 guiding principles.

[Read More]

Delivering excellent customer service across generations starts with a straightforward fact: different age groups expect fundamentally different things. Generational differences in customer service preferences span communication channels, response speed, tone, and the balance between human and digital support. This may be the first time in history that representatives are tasked with serving customers from five generations simultaneously — Matures, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z — each shaped by distinct life experiences and technology adoption curves. A multigenerational customer service strategy cannot rely on a single approach; it requires adapting communication style, channel selection, and pacing to match the expectations of each group. This guide breaks down each generation's customer service expectations and provides practical strategies for meeting them.

[Read More]

Service Integration and Management (SIAM) technology was created to optimize the critically-needed area of IT Service Management (ITSM). SIAM providers can manage all of IT's services while also ensuring they are using best practices in their services.

[Read More]

Organizations of all sizes utilize technology, especially computers, to facilitate their day-to-day operations. From on-site infrastructure to cloud computing, the way information is created, stored, and shared has changed drastically. Organizations that have taken a modern approach to their IT setup are not only employing cloud solutions, but also other computing methods, such as grid, cluster, and utility.

What is the difference? How can they help your organization with productivity? We want to assist you in making an informed decision on your new or updated computing setup. Continue reading to get the scoop on the disadvantages and advantages of grid, cluster, utility, and cloud computing in the workplace.

[Read More]

Service Design

What is the Importance of Service Design?

The most important reason for the success of a company providing services to its customers is its service design, which is the first point of contact between a company and the customer, and sets the customer's first impression of the company. Did you ever question how air ticketing, hotel booking, or banking services have become so convenient that even a non-technical person can use them easily, or did you ever feel that using one mobile phone service is much easier to use than another? Who makes these services user-friendly and convenient? Well, the answer is a service designer. A service designer is a person entrusted with the role of creation a service design for a company.

[Read More]

What is an Automated Information System (AIS)?

You may not know a lot about AIS, but it can help your business. Automated Information Systems (AIS) are computer-based collections of data and software that use the input of various resources to automate the management of operations and information, creating useful output that can help a company make strategic decisions. AIS is a compilation of hardware, software, or both to automate communication, documentation, reporting, processing, and storing information, and typically has a front-end interface where a user interacts with the system, a back-end database or a similar mechanism for storing items such as management reports, real-time transaction processing feeds from other systems, and middleware logic used to tie it all together.

[Read More]