The SysAid Newsletter - Award-winning SysAiders - Pictures and Success Stories

Dear SysAiders, With The Oscars now just around the corner, it seems February is indeed the month for industry acknowledgements and awards. While we aren't promising the same blockbuster Hollywood lineup, we will be featuring a few of our own star performers and award-winning achievers here at SysAid this month. On the topic of famous industry awards, applications for the prestigious CIO 100 Awards have now closed. We're proud to announce the final SysAid nominees we put forward for consideration for their notable contributions to IT innovation excellence using SysAid. We were certainly impressed with their achievements and offer them our full support as they proceed to the next stage of the distinguished CIO selection process. As promised, The Year of the SysAider is well and truly here. Congratulations to our First SysAider of the Month for 2009. Nathan Lock (Cega Group UK), also known as TechGuy in the SysAid community, has been an outstanding contributor and invaluable source of feedback for new feature developments and releases. He has also been chosen as our new SysAid Mod to head two of our latest sub-forums. Read our exclusive interview with Nathan Lock, SysAider of the Month January. Our ongoing Internal SysAid Campaign has also unearthed some fantastic IT success stories from companies all over the world. Have a read of one remarkable IT Success Story from Food Concepts and find out how SysAid earned one IT manager Best Supporting Department of Year Award. If you have a SysAid Success Story of your own, share it with us at Marketing Communications. On a final note, the third SysAid Certification course is currently underway. For those who missed out, our fourth workshop will be commencing on May 4th, 2009. Early birds who register before March 15th will receive a 10% discount. Find out more about SysAid Certification. We wish you many a success story this month. Sincerely, Israel Lifshitz CEO   In this issue: Are you there? 2009 CIO 100 Award SysAid Nominees SysAider of the Month Interview: TechGuy Nathan Lock IT Success Story: Food Concepts Know Your Knowledgebase Tips for Version 5.6.X Hottest Posts from the SysAid Community SysAid Poll of the Month: What motivates you to achieve in IT? IT Joke: Undercover Geek Style   CIO 100 Award SysAid Nominees The names to watch in 2009... Last month, we launched a call for all SysAid Innovators to send us their innovation success stories for the chance to gain SysAid sponsorship for the prominent CIO 100 Awards. Applications closed on February 1st as CIO Magazine now begins the task of selecting the top 100 IT innovation organizations from around the world. We would like to thank all who participated for your accounts of the extraordinary ways in which SysAid is used to make a difference in the community. The task was difficult, but we managed to narrow it down to the final organizations that we thought demonstrated the most innovative use of SysAid to deliver business value. Here are two examples of our SysAid nominees and a brief overview of their outstanding achievements: Marvell Technology Group Ltd, provider of storage, communications and consumer silicon solutions. Moaz Mussel, Information Systems Group Manager, reports that SysAid has been deployed as the central business support system across all departments in Marvell Israel (including IT, Finance, Logistics & Facilities and Testing etc). In the initial stages, Marvell carefully managed the company-wide transition and streamlined internal support processes to provide its 1100 users with a single point of entry via the SysAid web form. Within a year, Marvell was able to close all internal support call centers and significantly reduce business cost, while increasing service levels and customer satisfaction. 'Support groups consistently meet SLA targets set by the organization and survey results demonstrate high levels of customer satisfaction.' Moaz also cites the SysAid Knowledgebase as a vital repository of all service-related communication that further facilitates inter-departmental communication. Food Concepts PLC, Food and Entertainment provider. Azeez Buari, Head of Information Technology, used SysAid to overcome geographical limitations and reduce resource and travel costs associated with servicing remote outlets following the company's rapid expansion of retail outlets across the region. 'Our SysAid Innovation added a wealth of value in terms of IT support expenses and also the speed of service.' Read more about it in IT Success Story: Food Concepts. See here for more information about the CIO 100 Awards   SysAider of the Month Spotlight Congratulations to our first SysAider of the Month for 2009! A quick cyber-stroll through our active SysAid Community reveals many an insightful post from our outspoken resident SysAid Wiz, Techguy, who this month claimed the first ever SysAider of the Month title. He now goes on to head the Beta Issues and Analyzer / Reporting Sub-Forums as our new SysAid Mod.          The Inside Word with TechGuy     Nathan Lock      IT Systems Engineer      Cega Group UK How long have you been in IT? 18 years in total and 3 years with Cega Group. How many users and administrators do you have in Cega Group? Approximately 400 users and 5-6 administrators. How did you hear about SysAid in the first place? I actually read a review while doing a Google search. What attracted me most was that it was free to try. What was your first impression of SysAid? At the time our existing Helpdesk Software wasn't doing the job, so we started looking around for other Help Desk software. Initially, the thing that I liked most about SysAid was that it worked across multiple platforms, and that it was customizable and very easy to use. It's a well designed product and offers a lot of flexibility in different environments. So I found it fairly simple to migrate the data from our existing application. With its support for LDAP databases, bringing in the users took no more than 5 minutes! I also thought that the pricing was very reasonable - your pricing model is very close to spot-on. What was the impact on your users? Honestly, I'd have to say it was seamless. They barely even noticed. It wasn't like I received calls from users about how to raise service requests. All they knew was that they were suddenly getting automated emails notifying them of the status of their request at every step of the way. The main improvement was that they knew we were looking into their case and taking their call seriously. In the past we used to do these things by phone and email. I'd often receive several calls from the same user to check if I was working on their request. Since we started using SysAid, we don't get that happening as much anymore. What are the day to day challenges you face in your department and how does SysAid help you? I'd have to say the Knowledgebase has been a big help. About 50% of our service requests are mostly repetitive, so it really helps to have past solutions documented somewhere. Even if the users don't look at it themselves, the fact that our administrators are able to search for similar past requests helps them to find resolutions to problems a lot faster. Overall, there's definitely been a reduction in resolution time. You have just been selected as our new SysAider Mod. What has your experience of the SysAid Community been so far? It's a great source of learning. I've picked up so many different tricks and learned things about best practices I didn't even realize I could do. It's also a great place to lobby for feature requests! The SysAid team is usually very responsive to our ideas, unlike other larger organizations - and that's the great thing about SysAid. And what is your future vision for the new sub-forums you will lead? Well, it's still early days and we will have to see. But I think Reports in particular is a powerful feature and I want to help others understand them and also get users contributing back to the forum with their own home-grown reports. And finally, on a lighter and more personal note - how would you describe yourself? The words IT Geek - or rather IT enthusiast - come to mind! I also play the keyboard and piano, and have played in a few bands here and there. I like Jazz, Blues and Gospel music. Could YOU be the next SysAider of the Month? The search is now on for the next SysAider of the Month. Maybe you've been with SysAid for a while, referred new customers or promoted the use of SysAid in your organization? Or perhaps you've contributed to the SysAid community in an exciting way? It could soon be you enjoying the perks of our brand new SysAider of the Month award and a fantastic SysAid prize package. Only one way to find out! Apply now.   SysAid IT Success Story SysAid Wins Best Supporting Department of the Year Award at Food Concepts PLC Head of Information Technology Azeez Buari's decision to deploy SysAid across 50 new Food Concepts outlets earned him more than just an efficient Help Desk and competitive business edge. Just over a year ago, the tiny IT department of three at Food Concepts was sent into a state of flurry at news of the company's unprecedented growth and rapid geographical expansion, amounting to a 500% outlet rollout increase. As new Head of IT, Azeez Buari had to rapidly define IT requirements for new store prototypes, including POS and Back Office networking systems - and find a way to cater for the proliferation of new end-user service requests. Azeez's choice of SysAid software to facilitate Help Desk activities across all new stores was a propitious one. SysAid not only helped his IT administrators prioritize their service calls and meet service level targets, but also allowed them to support remote users in rural areas. In addition, Azeez was able to reinforce SysAid to suit other internal departments also requesting SysAid-style software of their own. "Our remote users now send service requests through the messaging feature to our SMS gateway where the assigned administrator is able to respond immediately...Other departments fell in love with our support structure and requested a solution like SysAid to support them. Looking deeper into SysAid, I discovered that the service request escalation and routing capabilities could satisfy their needs. The fantastic multi-company features on SysAid's enterprise edition allowed me to turn our Facilities, HR and Operational Services Divisions into different SysAid companies with separate support email addresses. The results I delivered with SysAid were so glaringly obvious that it earned me the Food Concepts Best Supporting Department of the Year Award. Thank you SysAid, and congratulations on a good product." Azeez Buari, Josephine Ukoli, Uchenna Anyanwu (Food Concepts PLC Awards Ceremony, December 2008) Do you have a SysAid Success Story of your own? We'd love to hear it and perhaps even run a feature on your organization. We look forward to hearing from you. Please contact Marketing Communications, including as many details as you can about your SysAid Success Story.   Know Your Knowledgebase Add this useful tip to your local SysAid Knowledgebase How can I quickly increase or decrease the view/zoom/font size of applications? If your mouse has a roller you can hold 'ctrl' and use the mouse roller to increase and decrease the zoom / size of font etc. of the current window. A sample of applications it works with: Office Applications: Word, Excel, Power Point Internet Browsers: IE, FF, Chrome Acrobat reader Most picture viewers You can integrate this and other Knowledgebase posts directly into your local SysAid with a single click. Got a handy IT tip of your own? Share it with our SysAid community and help build a powerful IT Helpdesk Knowledgebase open for all.   Tips for Version 5.6.X A Tip from Sarah Lahav, the Head of SysAid Customer Service and Support Team Hello All, Unbelievable how time flies by! It's now February and I find myself being asked for a new tip already. This month I would like to provide you with a list of a few features that are now available in version 5.6.X. While they may seem small, they could in practice make a very big difference to the way you work. 1. Displaying end user's company phone number We have added a new variable to the service request notifications. You now have the option to also display the end user's company phone number in the notifications you receive: ${CompanyPhone}. For all of you service providers out there, having the company's phone number displayed on the email could save you a lot of time when trying to contact the end user. 2. Customized SysAid desktop icon In the SysAid Deployment Tool, you now have an option to define your own customized SysAid icon to be deployed across your workstations. You could decide on an icon that makes sense to your end user, making SysAid more accessible and easier to locate on the desktop. 3. Set user login requirement It's possible to set an option for the Agent to request end user logins each time a service request is raised. This is very useful for shared workstations which usually have one generic login. It's also very handy in meeting rooms, libraries etc. when end users wish to submit SRs with screenshots and asset details. This month's tip is very small but I believe that everything starts with the smallest details. Have a great month. Sarah Visit the SysAid community to comment about this tip   Hottest Posts from the SysAid Community Got some IT websites you just can't live without? What are your best IT websites? This thread, opened by Oded begins with: "I was thinking about gathering together a list of the best IT websites - Software Downloads, IT discussions, IT Articles etc. I will share mine, and would love to hear about yours. Here goes: http://www.cio.com, http://techrepublic.com and http://downloads.com." Among SysAider Tim Sutton's list are: http://www.experts-exchange.com http://it.toolbox.com http://www.gpanswers.com SysAider of the Month, Techguy, prefers: www.theregister.co.uk www.theunwired.net mobilitysite.com http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/default.stm Finally, SysAider wallerkr made some rather nice suggestions: http://www.tek-tips.com and of course, www.ilient.com (we like this one too!) Would you agree? Share your favorite IT websites with us   SysAid Poll of the Month: What motivates you to achieve in IT? What keeps us going the extra mile at work? Some say that financial incentive is not enough, but is that really true? Perhaps it's more the lure of the limelight and professional recognition that gets you going. Or maybe you find yourself spurred on by challenges or a sense of responsibility. It could be something else entirely. What motivates you to achieve in IT? Take our super-quick poll and let us know what you think. Last month we asked: Would you consider switching your IT to cloud computing? Could the tech experts have their heads in the clouds about cloud computing? When it comes to the SysAid community - over half of our SysAiders ruled out the switch to cloud computing, while for 28% the cloud represents a definite or potential possibility. Yes 10% No 62% Maybe 18% Don't know 11%   Joke: Undercover Geek Style   Please be advised that we have updated the SysAid End User License Agreements (EULA). You can find the latest documents at SysAid EULA-Registration Form and SysAid EULA-Installed Program.