Archive for May, 2008

Your organization was recently restructured and has developed its very own vision and mission.

With the new vision and mission you plan to create strategy maps and balanced scorecards to fully understand the corporate’s goals and objectives.

In essense, the strategy defines “We are THIS type of Organization” while the scorecard defines “HOW are we THIS type of Organization”.

There are multiple ways to implement strategy maps and balanced scorecard. Some would just draw and chart them out then distribute as a memo to respective staffs. For those who are technology savvy, they would use open source strategy map and balanced scorecard software to help with the implementation.

Strategy Map Balanced Scorecard Software is provided by a campany called Applied PC Systems Pty Ltd based in Australia.

Some of the available features include:

• The Startup program has 10 modules which include Vision/Mission/Swot, Strategy Map, Balanced Scorecard, Drill-Down Dashboard, Options, Log File and Database Integrity Checker.
• The Balanced Scorecard Objectives Grid is a highly adaptable multi-purpose table. 15 user defined columns can be defined in a variety of formats.
• The Initiatives tables are also highly adaptable with 24 user defined columns.
• The Drill-Down Dashboard module allows column-based cross-referencing throughout the whole Strategic Plan.
• The Closed Loop Learning Performance system thus originates from the Gantt Chart, back up through the Initiatives & Objectives Tables, the Organizational Tree and finally into the Strategy Map.

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Open Source Strategy Map and Balanced Scorecard Software

Has your organization decided to adopt ITIL processes to further improve IT Management and Service Management?

With various ITIL processes to apply and implement, there must be a good software or tool to help organizations apply the ITIL processes with ease and guidelines.

In this post, I’ll be attempting to map areas in which Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) can be utilized to aid in adopting ITIL processes.

Service Support
In service support, the three main processes namely Service Desk, Incident Management and Problem Management are centered around capabilities a of help desk software. When users have a problem or service request, they would call or email the help desk which would then be looked at by the help desk personnel as well as incident managers. With this service support process requirement, is MOSS 2007 capable of accommodating?

Definately! MOSS 2007 is capable of enterprise content management with workflow capabilities. Basically, Issue Logs can be easily created. Help desk personnel can be notified whenever there is a reported incident. With workflow capabilities, an incident can be routed to the next level if it isn’t solved by certain levels. Although MOSS 2007 has standard capability to create issue logs and tasks, to integrate it with some workflow would require some codes to be written.

As for Configuration Management, MOSS 2007 is capable of storing tons of information without needing a DBA to create tables or writing SQL queries. An end user with the appropriate rights can create documents, records, web content and forms easily. For sure, lots of configuration items can be stored securely in within MOSS.

Service Delivery
One key process within Service Delivery is Service Level Management. It is essential to be able to manage well the various aspects of services an organization offers to their clients. Most of the time, when we ask an IT department about the services offered by them, the answers provided can be vague and inconsistent. Thus it’s important to have a service catalog in place.

With MOSS 2007’s collaboration and content management features, it will be simple to publish the service catalog as well as its service level agreements on the portal. New and existing users / clients can easily view these information to proceed with any request of services.

Conclusion
Although MOSS 2007 may not be able to to cater for all ITIL processes such as Availability Management or Service Continuity Management, it is capable of doing a good job when it comes to collaboration and content management features. Workflow and search capabilities are also plus points. Check out MOSS 2007 and see how it is able to help your organization implement ITIL processes.

Is your company considering to implement a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to better manage future and existing customers? If yes, then you must be looking for one which best suits your CRM requirements. It’s also important for the software to stay within budget. With so many CRM software out there in the market today, there are just way too many to evaluate. If cost is a concern, especially if your organization is not that big, then you may consider Open Source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

This slide explains about open source crm software which includes the following topics:

• What is CRM?
• The different kinds of CRM
• Examples of proprietary CRM
• CRM as Software as a Service (SAAS)
• Why Open Source CRM helps
• Why not Open Source CRM
• Examples of Open Source CRM
• SugarCRM - One of the most popular ones
• Client / Server CRM
• How to choose a CRM

With this slide, you will be able to find out and understand more about the available Open Source CRM out there in the market today. You’ll be amazed that some of the software are already fully developed, tested and is enterprise class capable of going head to head against the proprietary ones.

Virtualization solution from Parallels (called Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac) allows nice integration between Windows and your Mac.

Parallels call this feature Coherence for its ability to hide the Windows desktop and make it appear as if your Windows applications are running directly on your Mac. VMware Fusion also has the same feature called Unity. It also works very well, although not with Windows Vista, yet.

Coherence completely blew the broad between Windows and Mac and allows users to get the best of both worlds at the same time. It works really very nice! With this feature Parallels Desktop now goes even further to deepen OS integration and create a seamless user environment.

Parallels Desktop is better integrated into the Mac OS desktop by means of registering file types with the Parallels guest applications, MS Office applications could be opened by simple clicking on them. You can also get Windows notifications on the Mac desktop - that is very cool.

Parallels set up shared folders between OS X and Windows quite nicely. Fusion asks you to do this manually.

Fusion lets you access Windows programs from its Applications menu. Parallels let you run programs from its Applications menu or the dock icon.

You can open Mac files with Windows apps and Windows files with Mac apps (which means you have the ability to choose).

After some time working with Parallels you can almost forget that you’re running two OSes!

Parallels have Snapshot Manager feature which lets you save a copy of your virtual machine at a point in time. You can create a snapshot for a stopped or running virtual machine. When I created a snapshot of my Windows XP, it took about 23MB. Parallels also have an intuitive UI for managing the snapshots. You may have any number of snapshots and they can all be managed nicely. VMware also has snapshots, but they seem less robust.

The capability of Parallels is more likely, you just don’t notice that you are working with virtual machine and it seems to be just a real machine with real applications. Parallels Desktop has nice usability.

I pretty satisfied with Parallels, especially since they have a fairly active support team with forums, knowledgebase and all the other necessary stuff. My stand is defintely with Parallels!