From the Desk of the CEO – August 2009

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Dear Kovair Customers and Prospects:

A new development at a new major pharma customer is Kovair’s selection to implement a process and resource management system for a very large in-house test center. Due to regulatory compliance reasons, this customer has total centralization of all their software test activities for all their product divisions. Managing this activity is a major task that involves hundreds of their own personnel as well as many more outsourced personnel from their IT Service Management Providers. Kovair will implement a three-part implementation of Demand Management, Resource Management and Test Task Management. Kovair’s Process Engine, Resource and Test Management capabilities are all being deployed in fulfilling the requirements of this project. If any of you have similar needs for your test management activities, do give Kovair a serious consideration!

Kovair’s value proposition with respect to the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) which we call the Omnibus that facilitates easy integration of many third-party Development and IT Service Management tools has been articulated before but can always be better explained to the potential users. To this end, Kovair’s next scheduled webinar on Sept 2nd is going to focus on Integration of Multiple Third Party Tools along with a live demo where we will show the integrations for Requirements Management, Test Management, Source Code Management and Sharepoint Documents. We strongly believe that in today’s market, no vendor of Application Lifecycle Management and ITSM tools can show this variety and versatility of integrations from so many third party tool vendors. This webinar will be of great interest to those of you who own many different tools for specific functions but are never able to get the benefits of their integrated operation achieved through Kovair like Integration Bus technology. So, please look up the details of the webinar registration elsewhere in this newsletter and take the time to register as that will change your perspective on what integrated ALM support and development can do for you!

Our last two webinars on Requirements Traceability and Re-use were well attended and if some of you missed them, please visit our website at www.kovair.com and view the recorded webinars shown under the Webinar section towards the bottom right side of the home page.

Recently, Kovair was ranked by SD Times as one of the top 100 software companies and top 10 ALM companies. We are very thrilled to be recognized by this publication and will strive to do our best to fully satisfy your needs with product innovations, reasonable pricing, and excellent service and support.

Sincerely,

Bipin Shah
CEO and Chairman

Kovair Helpdesk and ITSM Solution

One of the charters of any IT organization is to provide services to its internal or external customers. As the organization size increases, the complexity of IT services increases in a non-linear fashion. Helpdesk group within IT, which is also known as Service Desk or Support System, is the first line of defense in this complex Service Process.

Automating a Helpdesk Process

Helpdesk is a quintessential business process which has direct impact on business values. It has all the requirements to be automated to cut down the cost and inefficiencies. Kovair’s Omniprocess Process Automation Technology, an industry leading task based process engine, has some powerful features to help define, implement, enforce and automate Helpdesk processes.

Multiple People Playing Multiple Roles for Multiple Conditions

In a Helpdesk process there are many players. Often, the different levels of support come from different organizations at different locations; for example in an outsourced helpdesk scenario the first level comes from the outsourced company whereas the higher level support may come from the particular product vendor. Kovair’s flexible multi-user conditional Role resolution capability allows it to achieve this.

Different Workflows for Different Services

A Helpdesk process is used to support multiple products and services including IT, HR, Finance and Travel. However, the resolution process workflow for each is different with different sets of Roles. Kovair’s support of multiple processes allows the implementation of various workflows even with single Helpdesk interface.

Parallel Activities for a Process

The activities related to a ticket are done in parallel. Many state-based process tools cannot handle that due to their ‘single state’ at a time constraint. Kovair’s task based process engine allows multiple parallel tasks assigned to various persons that are all related to the same Helpdesk ticket.

Process Change Management

Due to changes in business environments, Helpdesk processes change more often than one would like process versioning capability and ability to make changes independent of processes currently in production allows process change management in a very controlled way. Due to drag-and-drop configurability of the Process designer in Kovair, Process changes can be implemented in hours rather than weeks like most other tools.

Calculating and Compliance to SLA

Many Helpdesk organizations are chartered to work on a pre-define SLA (Service Level Agreement) for their customers – internal or external. The performance of the Helpdesk organization is measured by their adherence to the SLA while delivering quality service. Kovair includes built-in methods to calculate time taken to complete various activities which are counted towards the SLA without counting those activities which are not covered by the SLA. These built-in methods make SLA calculations easy, automatic and transparent. With reminders and escalation policies to alert proper service managers about impending SLA non-compliance, such performance hurting incidents are kept low.

Metrics to Measure and Control the Performance

In addition to SLA, a helpdesk organization needs to measure their performance at a number of levels – from individuals to various sub-groups to the top management within the organization. Kovair’s dashboard capability allows creating various graphical and textual metrics which are calculated in real time to show upto the minute performance of the Helpdesk organization.

Keeping the End-Users in the Loop

Self help is a proven way to reduce the calls and email from the end users. The self help starts from submitting a ticket from a web site or converting the ticket from an email. It also includes a real-time status update as the ticket moves through the Helpdesk process. Kovair’s integration with any corporate website and email system allows one to achieve that. Kovair also allows a Helpdesk organization to minimize the ticket count to start with having a built-in Knowledgebase system. End users can search for the solutions to their problems in the Knowledgebase before submitting new tickets. Kovair also facilitates conversion from a ticket to Knowledgebase as part of the successful ticket resolution process.

Helpdesk as a Member of IT Service Management (ITSM) Teams

In an efficient IT organization, Helpdesk is a critical but one of the components. Its seamless integration with the rest of the IT organization is key to an optimized performance of the whole IT. The other components of ITSM include Incidents Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management and CMDB. Kovair’s ITIL solution includes all of these components including Helpdesk Management in a single interface and tightly integrated with each other. This allows IT organizations to eliminate the inefficiencies in managing multiple tools and have more time and resources to deliver the business values. However, if an IT organization already owns 3rd party tools to manage different service areas in ITSM, Kovair’s Omnibus Integration Technology helps them to integrate all these tools with Kovair’s Helpdesk Management solution. By doing that, an IT organization preserves its investment and has a highly functional integrated IT Service Management tools structure at the same time.

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Kovair Software is a Silicon Valley software products company specializing in the domain of Software Product Development tools and solutions and supports global software development and management through Value Stream Management Platforms – VSMP. Kovair’s focus on integrating third-party best-of-breed ALM and various other tools such as PLM, PPM, ERP, CAD, CRM, ITSM, Test Management and other Applications enables the creation of products in a synchronized tools environment through its Omnibus Integration Platform. Now with its recent addition of DevOps and DevSecOps capabilities, it has a full offering of product development tools in multiple domains enabling high quality product development and digital transformation for corporations. Kovair’s flagship products Omnibus Integration Platform, Kovair DevOps and DevSecOps, Kovair ALM, PPM and QuickSync, are highly preferred solutions for some of the major corporations globally.