Archived Webinars

These are a sampling of previous webinars we have had.  If you have any questions on these webinars please email us at info@smasystems.com.
 

Enhance Your IT Operations with Interactive Dashboards

Can you imagine viewing up-to-the-minute, critical business information

with a click of a button?

Would you like to analyze multiple business scenarios in dashboards using "what-if" modeling?

What if you could easily include interactive dashboards and analytics within your PowerPoint slides, Adobe PDF documents and over the web, or share
them across the enterprise in a scalable, secure environment?

Business Intelligence (BI) and reporting are important tools used to improve an organization's performance.  We introduced the benefits of enhancing your IT operation
by presenting stunning visual displays of data and metrics on interactive dashboards.

We will discussed the benefits of BusinessObjects interactive dashboards and demonstrated how you can transform dry spreadsheets into visually-appealing charts and graphs - the sort of information you and your colleagues can easily manipulate, share and discuss.  We showed and interacted with sample dashboards for IT service management, sales and other functions that are critical in today's business environment.

BusinessObjects dashboards will help you:

• Manage and reduce costs

• Improve customer/employee services

• Assess staffing levels

• Get the information you need to enhance processes

• Improve report distribution and provide management with real-time information

BI on the Fly:  IT Statistics Are No Substitute for Judgment

Delivering flexible and powerful reports to EVERY person connected within an organization that has trusted, immediate access to the business information they need to do their jobs is very important these days. 

During this webinar we discussed how you can safely and securely access business intelligence (BI) reports, metrics and real-time data!  You can do more than just access this information - you can interact with the data.  We demonstrated how you can drill-down into data for details, see compelling visualizations, schedule report delivery and specify parameters.  We also demonstrated how you can execute all this quickly, with easy deployment!

Empower your employees and staff with BI on the Fly!

Assessing the Performance of IT Service Management Operations

As technology changes and becomes more and more complex, the ability to provide world-class service and support to those who use it is more relevant than ever before. 
IT Service Management is the key component in addressing these needs.  Your organization may have different needs than others, perhaps even different from your competitors, but they are needs that should be addressed with the right procedures and technologies.

Uncontrolled changes to the IT infrastructure can result in increased downtime, reduced employee productivity and efficiency, increased costs, and poor customer service. 
IT Change Management allows you to control the impact of changes on your IT infrastructure. 

During this webinar we discussed best practices for managing service desk operations.

Interactive Dashboards & Reporting for IT

Imagine delivering the most flexible and powerful reports to every person connected within an organization that has trusted, immediate access to the business information they need to do their jobs—just as easily as they have access to email or the internet.

During this webinar we discussed IT reporting capabilities—ranging from reporting, query and analysis, to dashboards and visualization, to intuitive discovery and advanced predictive analytics capabilities.  We also demonstrated live interactive dashboards.

We presented ideas on how powerful reporting tools can empower your IT service management operation by:

Using IT Asset Management to Increase Your ROI

IT Asset Management allows you to comprehensively manage and track all the IT assets in your enterprise.  With a complete view of your IT inventory, you improve customer service, corporate productivity and drive down IT costs.

Every organization requires an IT asset management program, whether to simply get a

handle on what you own and where it is located, to meet new demands, or to meet audit or compliance-related regulations.

During this webinar we discussed how you can:

• Better budget for hardware & software upgrades

• Save money on future software purchases

• Avoid costly compliance audit risks

• Track down & manage all IT assets with ease

• Reduce internal support costs

• ...and much more!

Implementing an IT asset management program provides your organization with a number of benefits, including creating the needed baseline for determining what you have, where you can create efficiencies, and how you can meet compliance requirements.

A New FrontRange Winning Combination! HEAT Plus Centennial

Looking for the most comprehensive IT Solution on the market?
 

FrontRange Solutions' HEAT Service and Support offers powerful tools for Customer Self Service, Web Access for Analysts, Knowledge Management, Business Process Automation...and more! HEAT provides an ideal combination of ease of use, advanced features and customizability to IT help desk professionals and the people they support. 

And now, Centennial Discovery, the latest IT asset tool from FrontRange, optimizes the HEAT suite even further, providing you with the most comprehensive IT solution in the market today.  The award-winning Centennial Discovery software includes auto-discovery, inventory management, and license management solutions.

During this free webinar, we discussed how to use these two products in tandem and  bring out the best in them!

Increase Your Help Desk ROI with Mobility, Knowledge & Reporting

Are you looking to get more out of your Help Desk system?

SMA hosted a webinar on how to increase the return on investment on your Help Desk system by integrating products that provide you with mobility, knowledge and reporting solutions.

MOBILITY SOLUTIONS FOR HELP DESK SOFTWARE

The value of interacting with critical enterprise data within the help desk system when

employees are away from their desks and in the field is motivating organizations to roll

out tools for mobile interaction with service management applications.  We discussed and presented tools that bridge the "gap" between employees and their IT service management system, such as access to your help desk system via mobile phone browsers.

Benefits of Help Desk Mobility

• Decrease Critical Asset Downtime

• Reduce Help Desk Costs

• Improve Service Levels

• Lower Hardware Expenses

• Management of Entire IT Infrastructure

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS FOR HELP DESK SOFTWARE

Knowledge management can provide important benefits to an organization's support

function.  Organizations need to focus on fully leveraging their existing information assets and subject-matter experts to best take advantage of the knowledge that exists and new knowledge that can be created within the help desk system.  We discussed and presented knowledge management tools that increase productivity and improve customer service, and ensure compliance with policies and other operational efficiencies.

Benefits of Help Desk Knowledge Management

• Minimize Call Escalations

• Improve Customer Service

• Increase Employee Productivity

• Reduce Calls to the Help Desk

• Improve First Call Resolution Rates

• Shorten Call Resolution Times

REPORTING SOLUTIONS FOR HELP DESK SOFTWARE

Having access to all the information you need in help desk to make effective, proactive management decisions is very important.  Organizations need to be able to leverage data collected at support centers to analyze trends, root cause, resource allocation and other metrics that are critical to call center management.  We discussed and presented reporting tools that show you parameter driven reports that can provide graphs, charts and

drill-down functionality that deliver real-time information.

Benefits of Help Desk Reporting

• Real-time Information Via Web or Email

• Intuitive Graphs & Charts to Drive Decisions

• Pre-built Best Practice Reports for Management

• Cost Effective Organizational & Planning Tool

SMA has selected these 3 topics because of the positive impact they can have on your support function.  Taken individually or together, they can improve the service you provide to users and your own productivity.

Take a Live Tour of HEAT 8.4

Discover what HEAT Software has to offer and see through live examples how HEAT can enhance your help desk operations.

This webinar showed how HEAT software can help make you and your entire organization more productive and customer-focused.  We discussed how to automate your help desk or support center and save your company money.

Participants saw for themselves why HEAT has excelled in a variety of industries, including higher education, legal, financial services and more!

During this webinar we also talked about HEAT's suite of tools, including:

• iHEAT, web access to HEAT's call logging

• HEAT Asset Tracker, asset management module

• HEAT Plus Knowledge, knowledge management module

• HEAT Self Service, 24 hour access to HEAT for customers and end-users

Dollars and $ense: Building a Business Case for a Software Asset Management (SAM) Program

How do you present a business case to your management for implementing a Software Asset Management (SAM) program? 

In this webinar, SMA and SIIA (Software & Information Industry Association) explained how.

We discussed the Risks of being audited for software license compliance, including:

• the likelihood that your organization will receive an audit

• what the audit process is like to go through and how it can burden your organization and your staff, and

• the impact on your organization for being out of software license compliance
  (financial penalties, etc)

We discussed the Benefits of having a software asset management program in place before you are audited and we showed examples of how a SAM program can:

• save your company money in more ways than just avoiding compliance penalties

• provide more efficient IT support

• improve financial and IT planning for future software needs, and

• assure lawful abiding of your software license contracts

Following the Risks/Benefits analysis, we demonstrated tools that can be used to easily implement a SAM program at your organization.

IT Asset Management (ITAM):  Strategies to Manage Technology Transition and Change

Luckily, there are IT asset management solutions that can help you smooth the transition and manage changes.  Best-in-class tools provide a complete audit across the network so you can understand the exact status of installed hardware and software, making it easier
to avoid potential project pitfalls, avoid costs, and realize cost savings.

During this webinar we discussed best practices and demonstrated how tools can help you improve ITAM in your organization. 

The following was highlighted:

• Seeing exactly what hardware on your network is ready for new system installs
  and which need memory or hard-drive upgrades, or which machines need to be
  swapped-our for new;
• Providing a full audit of installed software, which makes it easy to highlight which applications are not supported by new operating systems and thus need replacement or upgrading;
• Tracking all assets and their locations - PCs and all IP-addressable hardware, including servers, workstations, laptops and other network devices, so you can easily implement necessary changes;
• Calculating and forecasting upgrade or replacement cost of getting your IT estate ready with software project management wizards;
• Tracking project progress of your applications rollout with real-time monitoring of which machines, departments or locations have been successfully upgraded and which have not;
• Integrating your ITAM solution with your help desk or service center software to improve service, productivity, and provide management reporting.

Maximizing Service Management with HEAT
 

Looking for the latest Service Management Solution that can help your entire organization be more productive and customer-focused?
 

FrontRange Solutions' HEAT Service and Support offers powerful tools for Customer Self Service, Web Access for Analysts, Knowledge Management, Asset Management,

Business Process Automation...and more!

During this webinar we discussed how to leverage automation in your help desk or support center and save your company money. 

We discussed:

• Leveraging technology to align procedures to Best Practice frameworks,
  such as ITIL

• Optimizing your call tracking system to be more responsive to your customers.

• Asset management to support your customer in a more accurate and timely manner.

• An effective knowledge management environment including the use of your organization's existing knowledge.

• Tools to measure trends, root causes and recurring issues that need to be addressed.

• Information that will empower you to make proactive decisions and enhance support processes.

Best Practices in IT Asset Discovery & Management

Using practical, "how to" examples, we demonstrated how you can easily and quickly implement best practices for IT Asset Discovery and Management.

We discussed:

• The IT Audit:  Know what you own on your network

• Software Compliance:  Assess your current software licensing risk

• Asset Location Mapping:  Know exactly where your IT assets are located

• Change Management:  Track changes in hardware and software with real time technology

• IT Inventory Control:  Predict the costs and impact of changes to technology assets

• IT ROI:  Optimize IT network assets and measure software usage

• Help Desk Integration:  Leverage IT asset management to improve service delivery and efficiency

Learn more about IT Asset Management and Centennial Discovery, a solution for today's demanding IT asset discovery, auditing and management requirements.
 

How to Assess Your IT Operation Using ITIL Best Practices:
A 5 Step Approach

Featured in this webinar was SMA's "5 Step Approach to IT Service Management." 
Using a five step process, SMA evaluated a company's IT service management
operation and developed a strategy to change current or implement new processes
based on best practices, ITIL and the organization's business needs.

The five steps that were covered in the webinar were:

• Project Initiation: understand the benefits of ITIL best practices & why they should be adopted

• Structured Interviews: develop a baseline for assessing current IT service management operations

• Observation and Data Collection: gather data to identify your organization’s current conformance with ITIL best practices

• Gap Analysis: target areas (“gaps”) you should address to improve overall process capability

• Development of a Strategic Action Plan: develop an action plan to better
  align the IT service management function with ITIL processes

This webinar presented:

• Methodologies to understand customers’ IT requirements

• Guidelines on meeting business needs through the delivery of IT services

• Techniques to improve the return on IT investments and improve the utilization
  of resources

• Approaches to enhance customer satisfaction with the IT support center

"Even with advances in support technologies, organizations are finding
it difficult to deliver the expected services on time and within budget.
In many cases, support processes need to be re-evaluated and
even re-engineered to effectively meet the requirements
of today’s customer-centric organization." 

Learn more about SMA's 5-Step Approach.

SMART for HEAT
Web and Email-Based Report Toolkit

Looking for powerful, easy to deploy web and email reports for HEAT?

Now you can easily deliver critical information throughout your organization with SMART, SMA Report Toolkit for HEAT.   SMA has developed this powerful web-based reporting solution for HEAT by using Service Management Best Practices as the foundation and by leveraging Microsoft SQL Reporting Services.

SMART for HEAT includes a Web console with access to a series of Best Practice reports, designed by SMA. These parameter driven reports can provide graphs, charts and drill-down functionality that deliver real-time information to support processes and drive decisions.

During this FREE webinar we demonstrated several of the reports and their
key features:

 

·          Intuitive Web interface

·          Easy export to Excel, PDF and other formats

·          Fast, cost-effective deployment

·          Powerful analytics

·          Report delivery via email, easy and automated

·          Best Practice pre-built reports

·          Additional report creation and customization available

SMA has leveraged its 20 years of experience and created this series of Service Management reports that will provide a solid base for reporting, monitoring and
analyzing support processes.  Additionally, SMA can assist in creating custom reports
to complement those provided.

Learn more about SMART.
 

During this Webinar we discussed the issues (a.k.a. “Headaches”) that presently face support teams in many Universities and Colleges.  We de-mystified the ITIL theory and helped to relate its more complex methodology to daily use terminology.  Before closing, demonstrations of industry-defined “Best-in-class” tools were given. 

SMA specializes in delivering technology solutions to Colleges and Universities.  We have provided products, services and information systems planning to support their unique requirements. Learn more about our experience with Higher Education clients.

"Software Licensing Issues:
Avoiding Piracy, Infringement & Audit Problems” 

Featuring a Keynote presentation by Keith Kupferschmid VP,
Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement SIIA
(Software & Information Industry Association)

During this webinar we discussed:
 

• Liability and consequences for piracy

• Types of piracy

• Combating piracy

• Developing a software management plan

   IT Asset Discovery - why it's important and what are the benefits

• A critical component for compliance

• Powerful ROI

We closed with "Best-in-Class" doftware demonstrations from SMA.

About Keith M. Kupferschmid

His Role at SIIA
Keith M. Kupferschmid is the Vice President for Intellectual Property Policy & Enforcement for the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).  Mr. Kupferschmid is responsible for working directly with SIIA's Intellectual Property Committee to establish SIIA positions and moving the SIIA agenda on issues relating to intellectual property. 
He also supervises the Association's Anti-Piracy programs.

Is Your Support Center World Class?
Software tools for Call Management, Knowledge Management
and Management Reporting

In order for your service and support team to be successful, they need a powerful automated solution that tracks issues and resolves them rapidly and efficiently.  Management needs to have the right reporting tools to measure performance and costs.

At this webinar we demonstrated how best-in-class software solution HEAT Service & Support, along with HEAT Plus Knowledge, HEAT Self Service, HEAT Asset Tracker and HEAT Plus Remote Support, can be used to manage essential support center processes.

Call Management
We discussed how to:

• Evaluate your current environment and optimize your call tracking system to be more responsive to your customers.

• Effectively manage service levels, improve support through automated processes, and provide customer with self-help options.

• Use asset management to support your customer in a more accurate and timely manner.

Knowledge Management
We discussed how to:

• Utilize tools that work seamlessly with your incident tracking systems.
• Use proven industry solutions to support your customers.
• Design an effective knowledge management environment including the use of
  your organization's existing knowledge.

Management Reporting
We discussed how to:

• Use tools to measure trends, root causes and recurring issues that need to be addressed.
• Quantify staffing levels, training requirements and costs.
• Collect information that will empower you to make proactive decisions and
  enhance support processes.

We demonstrated how an affordable, effective solution is critical to building and taking control of today's help desk and call center.  Learn more about HEAT.

What to Look for in an IT Service Management Application

How do you determine if an IT Service Management Application provides an optimal solution for your company? 

During this webinar we discussed the key features that one should look into when determining the right application for the organization.

Some of the issues we discussed are how to:

• Assess your requirements and IT service levels
• Evaluate the needs of your end users
• Assess the requirements for automation
• Evaluate an application's capabilities (e.g. root cause resolution, managing hardware and software assets and infrastructure, handling planned and
  unplanned change, knowledge management)
• Prepare management reports
• Analyze ROI

Learn more about HEAT.