Buissy.com - The Business Software Directory for b

Buissy.com is continuing the SEO work to get higher listed on search engines and therefore help software vendors to easier be found. By being listed on Buissy.com software vendors automatically receive high quality leads looking for software and find Buissy.com. Buissy.com has now reached the first page for several keywords and for Swedish keywords, Buissy.com is listed on the 1st position in a lot of cases. The business software directory will be released in several more languages to give opportunities for even more markets in using Buissy.com. Today Buissy.com is available in English and Swedish. French and Italian are soon released and German, Spanish and Russian is coming later during 2012. Go to http://www.buissy.com or contact us on [email protected] for more information. You can follow as at http://www.twitter.com/buissy for daily news on what is happening. Founded in 2010, Buissy.com is the first online business software marketplace targeting both local as well as international markets. Buissy.com, with expertise from both the purchaser side as well as the software vendor side, is a website with efficiency and user experience in mind. During 2011, Buissy.com increased the Business Software Directory steadily to offer the best products to the purchasers within the category of interest. The marketplace functionality increases to become the main communication platform between software vendors and purchasers.

Buissy.com is continuing the SEO work to get higher listed on search engines and therefore help software vendors to easier be found. By being listed on Buissy.com software vendors automatically receive high quality leads looking for software and find Buissy.com. For Swedish keywords, Buissy.com is listed on the 1st position in a lot of cases. The business software directory will be released in several more languages to give opportunities for even more markets in using Buissy.com. Today Buissy.com is available in English and Swedish. French and Italian are soon released and German, Spanish and Russian is coming later during 2012. Go to http://www.buissy.com or contact us on [email protected] for more information. You can follow as at http://www.twitter.com/buissy for daily news on what is happening. About Buissy.com Founded in 2010, Buissy.com is the first online business software marketplace targeting both local as well as international markets. Buissy.com, with expertise from both the purchaser side as well as the software vendor side, is a website with efficiency and user experience in mind. During 2011, Buissy.com increased the Business Software Directory steadily to offer the best products to the purchasers within the category of interest. The marketplace functionality increases to become the main communication platform between software vendors and purchasers. During 2012, Buissy.com is increasing the platform functionality as well as the amount of languages supported. All this to be able to help as many purchasers as possible to be able to find the software they are looking for. The Business Software Directory gives possibility to find software in around 40 business areas, like for example Accounting Software, Project Management Software, Time Management Software, CRM Software and Help Desk Software.

As Buissy.com is continuing to improve the platform users come in with their recommendations on how to make it even better. This is part of the process to improve the user experience and make Buissy.com the obvious choice for people when searching for business software. Buissy.com shows extensive information about business software and with an easy user interface. All products, even the products that don’t pay for their listing, have their own product information page. Software vendors are given different alternatives to market products, including free listing. These options include possibility to have ads in different sections and bid between vendors to control on what position the product is listed. Software vendors are also able to publish news about their products. The business software directory will be released in several more languages to give opportunities for even more markets in using Buissy.com. Today Buissy.com is available in English and Swedish. French and Italian are soon released and German, Spanish and Russian is coming later during 2012. Go to http://www.buissy.com or contact us on [email protected] for more information. You can follow as at http://www.twitter.com/buissy for daily news on what is happening. About Buissy.com Founded in 2010, Buissy.com is the first online business software marketplace targeting both local as well as international markets. Buissy.com, with expertise from both the purchaser side as well as the software vendor side, is a website with efficiency and user experience in mind. During 2011, Buissy.com increased the Business Software Directory steadily to offer the best products to the purchasers within the category of interest. The marketplace functionality increases to become the main communication platform between software vendors and purchasers. During 2012, Buissy.com is increasing the platform functionality as well as the amount of languages supported. All this to be able to help as many purchasers as possible to be able to find the software they are looking for. The Business Software Directory gives possibility to find software in around 40 business areas, like for example Accounting Software, Project Management Software, Time Management Software, CRM Software and Help Desk Software.

The software directory including Business Software for almost 40 areas, Buissy.com, has released version 1.0 of the site. This is the first real version of the site but Buissy.com has during the beta period already grown to become the third most visited business software directory in the world. Buissy.com is a business software marketplace where purchasers can find business software in numerous areas and news about that software - All in ONE place. It is important that purchasers feel that they are able to find software easily including information they want to read to be able to get further in their evaluation of what software to use. This is why Buissy.com not only lists products but also include a product information page for all products with extensive product information. Purchasers can easily find the product they are looking for using the product filter. If on the first page you are able to filter on products included in one or more categories and if you have stepped into a category you may filter on product features. All to be able to find the product you are looking for in minutes or even seconds. Buissy.com shows extensive information about business software and with an easy user interface. All products, even the products that don’t pay for their listing, have their own product information page. The product information pages include information like product information, company information, product features, price, language information, screenshots and YouTube video. Software vendors are also able to publish news about their products. Software vendors are given different alternatives to market products, including free listing. These options include possibility to have ads in different sections and bid between vendors to control on what position the product is listed. The business software directory will be released in several more languages to give opportunities for even more markets in using Buissy.com. Today Buissy.com is available in English and Swedish. French and Italian are being prepared and German, Spanish and Russian is coming shortly. Go to http://www.buissy.com or contact us on [email protected] for more information. You can follow as at http://www.twitter.com/buissy for daily news on what is happening. Founded in 2010, Buissy.com is the first online business software marketplace targeting both local as well as international markets. Buissy.com, with expertise from both the purchaser side as well as the software vendor side, is a website with efficiency and user experience in mind. During 2011, Buissy.com increases the Business Software Directory steadily to offer the best products to the purchasers within the category of interest. The marketplace functionality increases to become the main communication platform between software vendors and purchasers. The Business Software Directory gives possibility to find software in around 40 business areas, like for example Accounting Software, Project Management Software, Time Management Software, CRM Software and Help Desk Software.

Supply Chain Management (SCM), including among all Warehouse Management and Inventory Management, is the management of services and products that are to be delivered to customers. Supply Chain Management includes everything from storage and all movements of the products and all all parts contained in the products, including all work processes performed to get the products from the point of creation to the end-point. This is why we see warehouse management and inventory management in the supply chain management area. Warehouse management is aimed to control storage and movements of material in a warehouse, including how to pick material and make sure that the right material is packaged for the right customer. Inventory management is the control of how much you have stored to know what is available for distribution to customers. To help with keeping the supply chain management in control you have Supply Chain Management Software which can also be divided into different systems, such as Inventory Management Systems and Warehouse Management Systems. A Warehouse Management System, also called WMS, is helping you to store the materials in the correct place in the warehouse in the right place and keeps track of when you are moving them. A commonly used tool to help with moving material is the hand terminal. When picking the material you will then scan the material barcode, including all specifics such as type, color, etc, and make sure that the right information of what is stored in the warehouse is recorded. This will also help in making sure that the customer receives what is ordered. An Inventory Management Systems help you to keep control over how much you have in stock so that you have the correct amount of products in stock according to what the demand is. By having good control over the inventory you make sure that the customer will quickly get what is ordered and will also make sure that you get the correct amount of stock not to be over-stocked. Every now and then you control the inventory, count all products in stock, to make sure that the information in the inventory management system is correct. A Supply Chain Management Software (SCMS) often includes the two above mentioned systems and some more functionality to have good control over the flow of products and services. One important functionality is the forecasting functionality to understand how the future will look and therefore be able to order correct amount of products to have in stock. It is also important to be able to integrate the supply chain management system with other systems, including the systems at the suppliers. All to minimize the lead times. Supply Chain Management Systems are vital for suppliers of products. The bigger organization and therefore the more products in circulation, the more important with more complex and intelligent systems. When implementing the supply chain management system you will quickly realise that the expectations on the future is often very unrealistic. Using information of the past and the trends that have been, the supply chain management systems will help you a lot in keeping better control of how much products you need to order to have a smooth product flow, both from the suppliers and to the customers. It will not only make it possible to control the product flow but also control the resources needed from time to time to make sure that the movements of products are made correctly.

Dealer Management Systems usually covers several areas to make it possible to have less software included in the same workplace. This usually makes the working processes more efficient. The area is so big that this article only covers a brief introduction of what areas to consider and what kind of auto management software that might be interesting to look further at.

Cost Management is the process of planning and keeping track of costs in the organization. Cost management should be obvious for most organizations to make sure that individual projects as well as the overall operations move according to plans. Over all, a well implemented cost management strategy will help to reduce costs for production of products and services as well as creating an increased value for the customers. It is easy to say that cost management is something that is for the overall strategy for the company, but it is something that normally is taken into account for even the smallest projects. However, all costs together are based on the overall cost strategy. Cost Management Software to help in planning and keeping track of costs are mostly seen in the production and manufacturing area. But since costs are part of most areas in a company, software like project management software, issue tracking software and help desk software also include cost management in their systems. A common way to work with cost management in a project is to first plan the costs divided on different phases of the project. All costs that is supposed to be affecting the project will be accounted for, such as personnel costs, material costs and third party costs. The more detailed the planning is, the easier it will be to follow up costs in the project. Once the project is launched, the project manager will have to use resources as planned and if there are any situations arising where more resources are needed for the project decision need to be made by the project board. The project manager may appoint responsibility to approve purchases to members of the project and the purchases need to be filled in into the cost management software or whatever software used accordingly. After the project is finalized, a review of all costs will be made. This will help in improving the cost strategy for future projects. The post project review is an extremely important part of the cost management and should not be neglected. The first projects run after creating a cost management strategy almost never go as planned. This is where the final phase comes in. By reflecting on what happened in a project you will be able to learn for the future and after a few projects your predictions will be much closer to the real outcome. Cost management is sometimes well combined with the plan for revenue outcome of the project. This is why the project management team allow for costs to increase more than what is budgeted. However, it is important to plan for a project to be cancelled if costs are not as planned. This is why projects are divided into phases or at least have milestones where you reflect over the progress of the project. During these periods of reflection not only costs will be reflected over, but also timing of the project, changed factors on the market, etc. With all these factors in consideration it is important to dare to discontinue a project if it is not in the best interest of the company. Cost management is much more than a cost management software to keep track of all costs and be able to plan and budget projects. It is an overall strategy that need to be formed and by having a cost management attitude your company will be much more prepared for situations that will arise and therefore have higher possibilities to survive throughout financial crises.

CRM is short for Customer Relationship Management and is the strategy for managing communication and all interactions with your customers and prospects. The main goal with having a good strategy for CRM is to be able to find and attract new customers as well as to retain a good relationship with your current customers to make sure they stay with you. CRM describes the company’s overall strategy towards how to manage all interactions with the customers so that measuring of how the strategy works. This means that it is important not only to measure but also to constantly question the strategy to make it more efficient. CRM is not always as easy as it sounds. Some customers need more attention than others so it is important to categorize the customers into different areas. It is also important to understand that customers need different kind of attention in different phases of the relationship. To help you with the customer relationship there is CRM Software. The CRM Software will help you to store information about the customer, categorize them in different areas and stages of what kind of relationship you have with the customer at the moment and remind you to perform different activities with the customer. All interactions with the customer should always be stored in the system even when you are trying to get hold of the customer but failed to do so. Most users of the CRM Software are the sales people. Since they are usually very busy working with selling the products or services it is important that the CRM Software is intuitive and easy to use. It is also important to be able to easy follow up the interactions with flexible and good reports. Some CRM Software also combine the sales software functionality but it is important to separate the two processes and understand that CRM and sales are different areas. Sales are about the sales process and to handle offers and follow up the sales more based on figures (more will be discussed in the article “What Is Sales”) while CRM is more about the more soft sides of the relationship and the interactions. To help you understand if your strategy is good a great tool is a customer survey. This will not only help you understand if you are treating the customers well but also understand what kind of additional services they prefer. Some companies try to make the CRM quite complex. This might be good in theory since you are able to bring in as much information as possible. But, the complexity is to no use if the process and the tools are not followed and used by the employees. It is therefore important to think simplicity for the personnel first and then think about how to use this information the best way possible. By setting up an easy process you will be able to transfer this to your CRM Software. Your employees are going to be able to easily use it and gladly fill in information. This information will be the base for all customers and also the foundation that you can improve and build on. Creating a strategy for how to take care of your customers all the way from when they are leads throughout the whole customer life cycle is the difference between keeping customers and loosing customers. A company with a good CRM strategy that is constantly improved will improve the possibilities to succeed extremely much. This, combined with a good customer support, will make your company known for wanting to work WITH your customers, which is exactly what customers want. Combined with a good and user friendly CRM Software you will almost have the perfect recipe for success. At least in making your customers feel comfortable with you.

A Service Desk is an IT resource for organizations working with ITSM (IT Service Management) as defined in ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library). The Service Desk is intended to be the Single Point of Contact (SPOC) towards the customers of the IT department, usually the users in the company. A Service Desk can easily be mistaken for being the same thing as a help desk. However, the difference is quite big when looking deeper on what a Service Desk delivers. The Service Desk works to support the different ITSM processes used in the company. That is right, Service Desk is not a process itself, it is called a function. We are not going to discuss what the different processes do but here is an example of a few processes: * Incident Management * Problem Management * Change Management * Release Management * Availability Management * Capacity Management * Security Management The idea is for the company to feel that there is one instance to call to get help and propose change requests. All incidents and user queries are owned by the Service Desk and it is up to the Service Desk to make sure the user’s incidents are solved, regardless of if they have sent the request somewhere else or are working on it themselves. Besides being the single point of contact it is the responsibility of the Service Desk to make sure that services that are provided are working. If an IT service is not working, the Service Desk should try to get it up and running as quickly as possible. It is also for the Service Desk to give system support to the users. The work in the Service Desk is clearly defined and also has the responsibility of making sure that all incidents and user queries are managed as promised. Promises around the service are defined in an SLA (Service Level Agreement). To manage all calls everything is stored in some kind of Service Desk Software. The Service Desk Software includes a lot of functionality to help the Service Desk perform its work, such as: * Web / Email creation and monitoring of requests * Knowledge base * Internal chat with storing of conversations as part of the requests * Interface customization to customize to support the processes and the organization the best * Automated work flow engine to make as much as possible automated * Flexible reports as needed to monitor progress of requests * Dashboard for the personnel to give possibilities to easy know what needs to be done * Automated monitoring of requests according to what is promised in the SLA * and much more... Since the Service Desk is the single point of contact to the users, it is often set that all communication should be going through the Service Desk. This includes questions that need to be asked from any of the service providers to the users. The communication then goes back and forth via the Service Desk. In theory this is the way it should work, but in practice processes are often set up to make it possible for the person working with the request to communicate with the user, regardless of where in the ITSM organization the person is working. Implementing a Service Desk and therefore also ITSM in an organization can often be quite hard work and in the beginning a lot of things go wrong. But after some time and adjustments the work will be much more efficient and with higher quality than before. A lot is thanks to the structured work defined by the processes, but also thanks to the Service Desk Software that is implemented and tuned to fit the organization the best. It is definitely recommended to start with one or at least just a few of the processes, such as Incident Management, Problem Management and Change Management. One will then be able to extend the ITSM commitment to include one more process at the time. People working in the Service Desk are able to work in the different processes specified above. This will help in setting up your ITSM organization and to have ITSM work in your favor instead of the other way around.

Contract Management is the management of contracts a company has with vendors and customers, but also includes employee contracts or any other contracts that may be needed to keep track of. Contract Management is sometimes also known as Contract Administration. Managing contracts is the whole process from creating the contract and negotiating the terms in the contract to documenting all changes made from the original contract. This is why most contract management software also have very good functionality for document management, keeping track of different revisions in the contracts. So, what is really a contract? A contract is a legal bond between two or more parties, identified in the contract, to fulfill what is agreed on in the contract. A contract usually has quite a lot of terms and conditions included to make sure that everyone understands the whole commitment. It is very common that a contract includes what will happen if a contract is not fulfilled according to the agreements. One thing to understand, that is not very uncommon, is that companies enter agreements and then sometimes choose to bankrupt the company if they are not able to fulfill the contract. Since the contract is signed between two companies there is not very much to do in these cases. This is most likely to happen with smaller companies or larger organizations that need to be reconstructed, as is common during financial crises. Contracts are stored in a contract management software and a common term for the whole lifecycle of contracts is Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM). The contract lifecycle management is the management of the contract from the beginning to the end, including renewals of the contract. One benefit of contract management software is to keep track of when contracts are about to run out and therefore need to be renegotiated. This is especially necessary when the terms and conditions includes automatic extension of the contract. In my early years as manager I bumped into this problem when purchasing a software. We split the software cost over 3 years and the contract stated that if we don’t cancel the contract 6 months ahead of the end of the 3 years the contract was automatically extended, with the current terms and conditions, for another 3 years. We installed the software but after a while we chose to use another solution instead. Since we did not use the software nobody thought about 6 months notice of cancellation. After 3 years we received another invoice that we had to pay. We tried to renegotiate the contract but failed doing so since the terms and conditions were clear and the software vendor was not in the flexible mood. This cost us unnecessary $20000 and a lot of man-time to try to renegotiate that had been totally saved by having a contract management software to remind us before we needed to cancel. Having contract management software not only helps in reminding when different dates are about to occur that is of interest for the contract. It also helps in tracking all the changes and negotiations made during the contract lifecycle. This is good for more than just tracking but also for future negotiations since negotiations are always about give and take. If you gave a bit more during the last negotiation you can bring that up as an advantage for you for the next negotiation. Since you are also able to add notes about the conversations made, you can bring up what was promised by the counterpart. Sales people sometimes tend to promise too much to close a deal and by saving this information you will be able to use that to your advantage as well. Having employment contracts in the contract management software is also very beneficial. This will help you in keeping the agreements with the employees in one place and also give you opportunity to add the notes from the one-to-one discussions that are made during the year. These discussions are usually very good as base for negotiating the next year’s salary and benefits.

The software directory including Business Software for almost 40 areas, Buissy.com, has released version 0.97 of the site. This is the last release before release of version 1.0,  that is to be released later in November. To prepare for version 1.0, Buissy.com has developed the payment process to make it possible for software vendors to easily purchase services from Buissy.com. Besides providing for payment processing, the following functionality is added to the business software directory: * Redesign of parts of the user interface * List of the most visited software categories * List of the most visited products. On the first page you will see the most visited products in the whole site and for each category the most visited per category will be visible. * Advertisement possibilities for software vendors for both first page as well as for each category As a business software directory, Buissy.com is now established as one of the three most visited business software directories on Internet. This is very much due to the fact that the SEO work has started to take effect on the search engines combined with the ease for people to find the software they are looking for. Buissy.com is now on top 10 on the major search engines of more than 10 phrases making it more attractive for software to be listed and therefore found easier. Version 1.0 that will be released later this month and will include functionality for bidding on featured listings for software vendors. This will give possibilities for companies to choose what kind of visibility they want. It will also be possible to choose different membership models to have total flexibility in what services at Buissy.com companies wish to subscribe to. The business software directory will be released in several more languages to give opportunities for even more markets in using Buissy.com. Some more languages will most likely be available by version 1.0 following more languages at later releases. Go to http://www.buissy.com or contact us on [email protected] for more information. You can follow as at http://www.twitter.com/buissy for daily news on what is happening. About Buissy.com Founded in 2010, Buissy.com is the first online business software marketplace targeting both local as well as international markets. Buissy.com, with expertise from both the purchaser side as well as the software vendor side, is a website with efficiency and user experience in mind. During 2011, Buissy.com increases the Business Software Directory steadily to offer the best products to the purchasers within the category of interest. The marketplace functionality increases to become the main communication platform between software vendors and purchasers. The Business Software Directory gives possibility to find software in around 40 business areas, like for example Accounting Software, Project Management Software, Time Management Software, CRM Software and Help Desk Software.

Time Management is the process of controlling, understanding and planning how much time is spent on different activities in an organization. Time Management is used in different situations to make it possible to increase efficiency as well as to understand how much time that has really been spent on different activities. There are different purposes in controlling time spent for activities. Some companies use it to be able to understand what people are really doing during the day. This can sometimes be important to make sure that time is spent on the right things. It is also vital information to have as base for making the business more efficient in different areas. But, time management is also important in areas where you invoice work that has been done for customers. Without having the information on how much time you have spent it will be impossible to invoice the correct amount of money. There are different kinds of time management software that helps in tracking time spent on different activities. Some of them are specific to only collecting time and are mostly known as either time management software or time tracking software. However, since time is recorded in so many different areas of the organization, time management is also included in software providing other services, such as project management software, issue tracking software, etc. Being aware of the amount of time certain activities take will not only make it possible for a company to understand what the personnel are doing during the days. Besides having an understanding for possibilities to improve efficiency the information is invaluable for planning of future activities, especially when initiating a new project. By having information about how long an activity usually takes project planning will be much easier. The more times you have performed the activities, the better accuracy in planning. To be able to manage time in a good way it is important to have time management software that is not too advanced to use for the personnel. The more advanced and the more time it takes to enter the time the less willing your personnel will be to enter the time. This will result in inaccurate information about how long time activities took since they tend to add less activities and group activities into one. You also use time management to be able to allocate resources. This is usually the step after the planning phase and before the work is about to be done. The allocation is needed to be able to make sure resources are used the most efficient way. This is especially important with key people who are needed in different units of the organization. Since these resources might be needed in different places it will be very hard to not allocate them to ensure that the work will be done on time. One way of understanding allocation the best way is to think of booking of a conference room. If the room is not booked ahead there is a big chance that more groups of people wants to use it at the same time. There are different approaches to time recording. Some companies use time management software where you enter the activities using your own description without categorizing. This kind of software will mostly be used to control what has been done by personnel and is not that good as base information for future work. Another way of recording time is by having some predefined activities that you can enter time for. You put in how much time you spent on something but may in some systems also enter how much time you believe that is left until the activity is done. The second part is not as commonly used since it also takes time to predict and think through what is left to be done. The activities can also be defined in hierarchy, having parent activities to be able to gather information in a more structured way. An example can be to have a parent category called Meetings and then have sub-activities for the specific meetings. The third way, which is a new idea of time management, is to record deviations from a predicted value. This is a way to make time recording more efficient. If there are 15 people attending a meeting that is set to 1 hour, it would be very inefficient to have all 15 people report the 1 hour meeting. If the meeting took 1.5 hours instead, this can easily be changed by the person responsible of the meeting. By having one person doing this instead of 15 the time reporting will take much less time and more useful. The same works in projects. By having project activities predefined you will be able to confirm the time instead of filling in the time spent yourself. Some help desk software, task tracking software, service desk software and call centre management can automatically record time while working on a task. The recording starts a clock when you open the task and then stops the clock when you close the task. There are several ways of keeping track of how much time is spent on activities in the organization. Using reports to bring out the information you want in the right way is the key to most time management. Before implementing time management in your organization you should think about what you want to do with the information. Sometimes you believe that time management will be a solution to a lot, for example controlling what your personnel is doing during the days. But there are sometimes other solutions that should be used in these cases, for example manager coaching to give them tools to help the employees be more efficient.

A Help Desk is an instance helping people with computer related issues. The help desk personnel are experts in either specific computer software/hardware or common issues related to several different areas connected to computers. There is a difference between a Service Desk and a Help Desk in that a Service Desk is connected to the standard called ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) or ITSM (IT Service Management) which is a collection of processes built on best practices collected from different businesses during a lot of years. A Help Desk is an instance that is not connected to any specific process but does its best to help people in the areas of expertise. The description of Service Desk will follow in another article in the “what is”-series. There are 2 common implementations of a help desk. Internal help desk A help desk available for the internal organization is helping the employees of a company with the computer related problems. The problems can be anything from hardware related problems to involve help around software functionality. The help desk usually uses some kind of help desk software to support the users the best way. The help desk software keeps track of all issues to make sure that they are solved the quickest way possible. Usually the time to solve issues is connected to some kind of promise between the IT department and the rest of the organization. It is common that the help desk is responsible in helping out with installations of new computers and also the removal of old equipment as well. Since not all problems are possible to solve on distance, a help desk also has people who can go to the users to help out. These people are in many cases called ‘runners’. External help desk An external help desk is sometimes available to help external customers with issues around specific issues for a software or a function. This can for example be a help desk providing support services for a software vendor. The help desk would collect problems from the customers and try to help them as quick as possible. The help desk will be able to solve problems as well as collect information for feature requests needed from different customers. There are also possibilities to outsource your internal help desk. This can sometimes be very efficient both financially as well as how efficient issues are solved due to internal processes and skills. This can be seen as external but is really an internal help desk. Both the internal as well as external help desk needs to use help desk software to help them organize as well as prioritize the different tasks and issues. The software often includes a lot of functionality to help them be more efficient, such as: * Issue management * Time management * Discussion boards * Wiki or some other knowledge management tool * Automatic workflow to help increasing quality * Resource database, both users as well as the hardware and software they are using * Connection to the phone system * Support for several teams and skill based management * Chat connected to issues * External portal for customers / users Since the help desk need to do preventive work as well the daily tasks are not always coming from the users. Tasks that should be completed on daily, weekly or monthly basis are gathered in the help desk software and automatically turn up when they are supposed to be worked on. This is a great functionality to make sure that tasks are not missed. By doing the preventive work the help desk makes sure that users experience the best possible service from the IT department and the technical environment. Some of the preventive work is also connected to the monitoring systems. One example is when a disk on a server is about to run out of space. The monitoring system will identify that there is only 10% of free space left and automatically creates a task for the help desk to free up space so that nobody in the company will experience any problems. Since the IT area is wide and needs a lot of different experts, personnel resources used in the help desk, or at least in connection to the help desk, are divided into teams. There would be people in the help desk who are Single Point Of Contact (SPOC) and depending on what kind of issue that is reported they either solve it themselves or send it to another team to solve. By having the structure well defined time spent in the help desk for each issue will be optimized and the user will have to wait less time for the issue to be solved. As in most functions it is important to have some kind of software to store information. A help desk software will help the IT department in keeping track of everything needed to be solved but will also make it possible for users to follow the progress of their reported issues. Most help desk software also allow for users to report their issues directly in the system. This way they do not have to wait on the phone and are able to attach screenshots and other vital information easily from their computer.

I also believe to encourage people to come up with ideas even though they might be totally crazy and hard to realise. This is why I usually don’t remove ideas from the Idea Management Software but rather set a lower priority or set the in a state as “ideas for the future”. This is an important part of not making people discouraged because their idea might not be chosen.

Document Management is the idea of how to manage documents in a good way to be able to easily find them, find information in them, track changes in documents, share them with other people and still only show them to the people who should be able to see them. Included in the security part is also to be able to control what kind of information others should see and if they should be able to change the content of the document. In the past all documents were written on paper and stored in safe places where only the people with rights to the documents had keys to. It could be some kind of file cabinet. This method is still used at some places, but usually it is combined with having the documents in some kind of Document Management System, sometimes shortened DMS. In the beginning these were called Electronic Document Management Systems (EDM). Today you are able to find Document Management Systems that are specifically used for document management, but there are a lot of collaboration software or project management software that include a lot of the functionality needed in a lot of companies. This makes it even harder to find what you are looking for since you are able to install one system with multiple purposes. There are a lot of different functionality you are able to get with a Document Management System and it is therefore important that you think through what you may need. Some areas you need to consider are: * Security Security is usually very important for most companies and most documentation. There are different kind of security that needs to be considered. The first is the external security. With below requirements on accessibility it is important to set up the system in a way so that external parties cannot take part of the documents you do not want to share. The second is the internal security. This is usually a little more tricky since you want to consider several requirements. It is common that you want to have documents that are accessible by all people in a department, yet only a few of the people should be able to alter the information. It is also common that you want to have private documents for one person that should not be accessible by anyone else. Creating the organizational structure for the document management system is vital before deciding on what requirements you have. When going through the organization and how documents should be accessed and used by everyone you will understand much more of how you wish the system to work. * Collaboration One of the purposes of document management systems is to improve collaboration and have people change the document and easily view the latest revision of the document. So, how do you want this to work? Do you want everyone to be able to change the document at the same time or do you want one at a time add their changes? The first option is usually quite tricky but there are a few document management systems that can do this. The second solution is easier and have been around for long. What usually happens is that you “check out” the document to make changes. You then lock the document for anyone else to change. They will, however, be able to view the previous version of the document (the most up to date that is in the system). When you have finished changing the document you “check in” the changed document to make it visible to everyone. * Accessibility How should you be able to access the documents? This is a tricky question since you might want to be able to work with the document when you are travelling and not have access to Internet. Some companies are happy with having the document only accessible online and if you wish to take it home you can make a copy to your computer and view it offline. If you want to do changes to it you do it online. However, there are also some companies that need to be able to handle the possibility to also change the document offline. * Document formats What kind of documents do you want to be able to have in your document management system and how do you want them to be managed? Some systems allow you to work inside the system for all changes of a document. Some systems open the actual software to work in, for example MS Word. It is important that you think about how you want this to work. This is also important when looking at the next point, how to be able to search and find the document you are looking for. * Possibility for searching You have to think about how to be able to search for the document. One solution is to create Meta Information about the document and connect the information so that it is easy to find. Another way is to be able to search for the title, author and summary. This is, however, also considered meta data. Another way is to be able to do free text search through a document. This is a bit harder if you allow for any file formats, but there are a few really good document management systems that will be able to help you out there as well. * Traceability One of the most important things is traceability. Who changed the document and when? What changes did they do and are we able to easily go back to an earlier version? One thing you might want to trace is who has read the document. Perhaps you want to track that everyone have read the changes of the document and therefore should be aware of what is written. There are a lot of things that can be said about document management. In the beginning one can consider it to be very easy but after a while you understand the complexity of it. This article brings up some ideas of what to think about and open your minds to questions to ask when considering your next document management system.

Business Process Management, also often called BPM, is a systematic approach on how to improve the business processes in a company. BPM helps a company to get a clear picture of how the company’s processes are today and how to improve them. BPM is something that is continuous in the organization. By working with the business processes you improve them, test them in the organization and then improve them again. This not only makes the work in an organization more flexible, but also helps companies to become more capable of changes, something that is very important in today’s volatile economy. When defining the processes in BPM there are a few questions that need to be asked: * What is performed? * How is it performed? * Who is performing it (preferably a role, not a named person) * In what order are the activities performed and how long time can each activity take? To visualize this in a good way we have the BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation). BPMN provides graphical notation for specifying the business processes in something called a Business Process Diagram (BPD). The main purpose of  BPMN is to bridge the gap between the business side and the technical side, since a lot of the process models are used to have the technical side help automate processes. However, it is important to understand that the business process models are very powerful for part of the business even though you do not automate the process using technology. Just having the personnel being guided through a visual design of what should be done, in what order and by who in different processes is invaluable. In BPM you work with different groups of activities. * Design, where you identify the processes and define them using the questions above. * Modeling, where you use the BPMN to create a graphical model of the process. * Execution, where you work according to the defined model. This is often done with an application, or at least involving an application, to help since a lot of processes are automatic. * Monitoring, where you monitor the result and the way the execution works. * Optimization, where you take the information from previous steps and identify bottlenecks and potential possibilities for saving money. Since BPM is continuous, the steps are repeated every now and then. The frequency depends on several things, for example what kind of process and what type of organization. There are quite a few BPMS (Business Process Management Suite or System) available to support the business process management. These systems not only help you to define and model the processes, but also to automate and improve them. The amount of functionality available in a Business Process Management System is varying quite a lot. Therefore it is important that you understand what you are looking for before purchasing a system. Business Process Management is a great way to get control over your business and what is happening during the daily work. It is important to understand that all processes should be connected to the company’s purpose, goal and vision to be able to understand that they are really aligned with what the company is meant to do. During these kind of exercises it is not uncommon that smaller companies start thinking about the purpose, goal and vision of the company since they have not been defined clearly enough before.

There are several different project management methodologies, usually designed to have either the the traditional approach or the agile approach as base. Among the traditional approaches you will for instance find RUP (Rational Unified Process), PRINCE2 and Waterfall. Among the more agile approaches you will, besides Scrum, also find XP (Extreme Programming) and RAD (Rapid Applications Development). For whatever approach you are choosing to work with it is hard to plan and communicate without having a Project Management Software. There are different types of project management software recommended depending on what kind of approach you are using. A few project management software support more than one project approach, but most are focused on trying to support one approach the best possible way. Some functionality that is important when looking for the Project Management Software that is best for you is to understand what kind of planning you want to do, what the project structure should look like as well as how you wish to communicate in the project team and what sort of reports you wish to have from the software.