Features of Advanced ALM Services

Application lifecycle management can be defined in a multiple ways, depending on the way with which people look at it. However, it happens to be a critical aspect of the corporate landscape and is radically different from SDLC (software development life cycle) as some people confuse it to be. An application’s Lifecycle includes the overall time period through which an organization is incurring expenses on an asset, i.e. from the inception stage to the final stage of the product’s life.  In order to be precise and meaningful, ALM must have an equally wide perspective.

 

Advanced Application Lifecycle Management Solutions & Its Features

Eminent market players today offering advanced Application Lifecycle Management studio today fulfils various aspects ranging from requirements management to the final release management phase. This apart, other members such as software architects, analysts, consumers, designers who share deliverables and project assignment objectives amidst them that is brought together worldwide. Other essential features include the following:

 

100 percent web based solutions - Users are able to access a web architect grounds-up framework through popular browsers such as, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and many others.

 

There are Multiple input procedures that help users to have any requirements through the following methods – Sending them by Email, Import them from Microsoft Word Document, Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, or a CSV file with a configurable format, Submitting inputs from a corporate portal or website or from any third party tools in real-time.

Entity Relations – The common feature in a Requirements Management tool is traceability and advanced ALM solution have expanded this Traceability Relation making it a central feature for its built-in applications.

 

IT Process Automation – ALM solutions assists in the total IT process automation of the inbuilt application.

 

Apart from this ALM solutions are also equipped to develop reports of various kinds making use of numerous multiple reporting tools such as:-

• HTML, allowing direct printing from the application
• Export any lists to Excel for additional formatting and manipulation
• Inbuilt  Crystal Reports that provide simple means to perform custom formatting
• Word Reporting leads to fully personalized formatting with multi-level data elements

Dashboard Report with update information from the system for reporting any aspect of the project that comprises the overall Project Health or Process Indices Report with Graphical, Tabular and Chart formats

 

Therefore, the modern day ALM solutions enable end users and consumers to arrange in the software delivery process as per their requirements. 

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Why Should You Deploy IT Help Desk Solutions?

An IT Help Desk is a resource that is designed for the IT users to contact when they are faced with concerns with their IT services. Help Desks generally has a multi-tiered trouble shooting approach by having their own team of personnel and vast technical knowledge available. The deployment of multi-tiered assistance varies within the organizations. In an organization it might be one person who has all the know-how. Likewise, in another organization it could be a group of people who conduct some kind of support training in-house in order to offer IT support.

Standards for Implementing Best IT Help Desk Practices
The most strategic process for deploying an IT Help Desk solution is to comply with the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices. The best practices Help Desk should comprise of the following:

* Single point of contact (SPOC) for IT interruptions
* Computer or Software consultations
* Tracking capabilities of all incoming problems
* Problem escalation procedures
* Problem resolution

Keeping this mind, eminent companies specializing in agile methodology has come with advanced IT Help Desk Software. Some of the features of this innovative software include the following:

Helps consumers to submit requests that are in turn managed with the help of a simple process having two service teams, namely Level One Support and Service Desk. This pre-defined process can be improved according to business requirements and objectives of service request management workflow of the service provider.

* Numerous IT service requests can be associated with an incident. The closure of all these request depends strictly on the closure of linked incidents

* The software has an in-built automation technology that assists to define, execute, enforce and automate helpdesk procedures

* Supports various helpdesk procedures, and enables the execution of multiple workflow’s within a single helpdesk interface

* There is a task-based process engine that enables several parallel tasks allotted to multiple persons that are all associated to one helpdesk ticket

* There is a drag and drop configurability that allows the execution of process changes in hours as compared to weeks

IT Help Desk solutions can be executed in multiple ways, but it is essential to address the end user needs and be functional as fast as possible. Furthermore, by following the best practices for Help Desk solutions also helps an organization to have its own foundation for the IT team in order to help in crucial strategic areas in a company and other various components of IT service management that includes Problem Management, Incident Management, Release Management, Change Management and many others.

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Understanding IT Service Management Tools

The globalized business world today communicates mostly through the electronic media with all important business data stored in digital formats and transferred through wide telecommunication networks. However, the growing technological innovations and demands from the customers bring in more challenges for these forward looking enterprises. To meet the aggressive competition and to deliver high quality IT services enterprises go in for upgraded infrastructure. Nevertheless they need to ensure that the services rendered meet the efficiency standards besides providing enterprises with maximum return on investment.

Spread across wide geographical distances and connected through large networks, managing an efficient IT system is a challenge that these global enterprises face. However, with the growth of outsourcing facilities and with large number of service providers having ventured into the field, the global enterprises depend on the IT service management tools of the service providers. By combining people, process and technology, the IT service management manages the IT systems from a customer’s perspective. With a work flow based global platform this facilitates enterprises to implement ITSM processes across multiple branches and geographic locations.

Being a web based software, the IT service management provides enterprises with ITSM tools service request, incident management, problem and change management through a single solution. Further, this being accessible from any location irrespective of the time, the IT Service Management tools are also provided as a built-in application as part of the software development life cycle.

The leading service providers offer their clientele world class IT service management tools along with the application lifecycle management solutions. These ITSM tools with a web-architecture framework are accessible through the internet browsers and have multiple input methods including word documents, emails, web portals or synchronized third party tools in real-time mode.

The single solution with built-in applications for ITSM works out advantageous for both small and medium enterprise as well as large business houses. This can be used for functional applications such as:

* Managing all service requests and keep the customer informed of progress towards solutions or advising them on the work process, the IT Help Desk solution

* The requirements traceability matrix tool ensures entity relations across in-built applications and between service request, incidents, problems, changes and configuration items.

* Facilitates IT process automation.

* The availability of HTML, dashboard and crystal reporting options facilitates generation of various reports and documents.

Along with IT service management tools that enhances IT performance and monitoring, the ITSM solutions from the leading service provides possess the ability to integrate internal tools as well as best-of-breed tools from third party vendors providing a seamless business ecosystem.

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Deploying Efficient Help Desk Solutions

The help desk can have a greater dimension than a mere reactive crisis centre coping with the concerns encountered by the consumers. It has the potential to be used as a predictive and diagnostic tool, functioning as a nexus of data and interaction. With the ever increasing IT system complexities, the rising expectations and demands of the end user today the help desk has reached a crucial point of its development rather than just getting stagnated in a “technology-oriented” phase.

There were many definitions of IT help desk solutions by various IT analysts and authors. One of them is it being an accessible service point which will offer on-demand service, data or action to help the user in conducting IT associated tasks. Apart from this basic definition, the role of the help desk is generally extended to that of only a technology facilitator, attained by the analysis and collation of data at the help desk to manage end-user technology proactively. 

However, in the recent past IT analysts coined a term “real help desk” that identifies three crucial aspects of the help desk:

* Multiple and centralized help desks
* A staff operating exclusively on a rotational basis
* The manning of experts and staff with a basic knowledge that can pass on issues
 
Today solution providers of agile methodology have introduced innovative help desk solutions keeping in mind present day client need and requirements. These solutions with their multi-user role resolution capacity help multiple helpdesk persons to enact various roles for various situations. Advanced IT help desk solutions or software assists multiple help desk procedures and helps in deploying several workflows within a single helpdesk interface. 

Most solutions come with a task-based process engine that helps in multiple parallel tasks allocated to various people that are associated with the same helpdesk ticket. Furthermore, there is a drag and drop configurability of the process designer that helps in executing process alterations in hours than weeks. These apart, advanced help desk management solutions are equipped with computation compatibility that makes the Service Level Agreements (SLA) estimations automatic and simple.

The concept of help desk management is a new phenomenon in the IT landscape and does not completely fit into a single subject domain. As a result it is an area of the information science, computing and service management communities.

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Strengthen Business Processes with Effective ITSM Software Solutions

With a large number of business services being managed by Information Technology these days, organizations are investing in Information Technology solutions to achieve maximum customer satisfaction. Providing better visibility into IT operations and functional services, IT Service Management (ITSM) is a methodology that has a straight forward approach towards the roles and responsibilities of people taking care of IT service operations. 

In any service organization, the implementation of IT processes strengthens the business process and enhances the quality of service operations and delivery. Meeting customer expectations and understanding what is anticipated by a customer becomes abundantly clear to service providers. IT service management personnel require solutions that can offer ways to solve user-reported problems and also ensure that such information are entered into a knowledgeable base for future reference. In any IT organization, the challenge is to be prepared to address any issues in these situations. It is also vital to preserve the prior process versions and also preserve the ability to go back to old process versions that are based on management directives. With a task based Omni process workflow engine, it is possible to address all these issues while the users and the management have the complete visibility to problem resolution process. 

Adopting suitable IT service management software solutions help improve the inter-team communication and collaboration. This type of a service oriented approach manages IT infrastructure to deliver the best service, and focuses on organizing people and service operations in the most excellent way possible.  This reduces the time spent on issues and problem resolution and removes replication of efforts in problems that have been resolved earlier. Choosing the appropriate ITSM solution will offer many benefits owing to its varied functional abilities and seamlessly integrate with all the other components like Problem management, the change management process and make it ideal for enterprises. 

By virtue of ITIL best practices, the three major components of a service organization – People, Process, and Technology – get streamlined, reducing the cost of service operations. Look for an IT Service Management software solution that has the capacity to provide a workflow based configurable global platform for implementing IT Service Management processes distributed over multiple geographic locations and across multiple organizations.

Before making a final selection of the tool,  it is advisable to take some time thinking and discussing the process needs with vendors to avoid making an investment in a wrong solution.

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