Preparing for the Cloud

Thinking about moving to the Cloud?  Whether it is your RightAnswers system, or another system, there are some important factors to consider.  Most importantly, you don’t want to recreate the wheel.  Leverage experiences from others in your organization that may have previously moved an application they support to the cloud, or implemented a cloud-based solution.  What challenges did they experience?  (Common areas of challenge for enterprise applications can often occur in the area of authentication and integration.)

More than likely your organization has a standard in place for how solutions inside your firewall authenticate.  Do they have a standard for solutions in the cloud?  Many organizations have a list of supported approaches for the cloud that vary from there on premise list.  Others who see a future that involves more cloud activity are adopting authentication standards that work for both cloud and on-premise solutions or establishing new standards for the cloud.

Other questions to ask:

• What other systems does this cloud based solution need to integrate with inside your firewall?  
• What integration options do your other systems offer and are they available to you?  
• For example is your help desk system web based?
          - If so, can its web services be published to the Internet for a cloud
             based system to communicate with? 
          - If it’s not today, what will it take to get it there? 

Many of these systems have other systems integrating to them that you may be able to learn from or piggy-back on.

A few years ago Cloud based applications and company thoughts about them were much less mature than they are nowadays.  Very few companies are brand new to the idea of Cloud based solutions today, and many solution providers have lots of years of experience to draw from.  Not only should you leverage the resources and experiences you have internally but also the vendors’.   At the end of the day it’s in both parties best interest to make you Cloud project as successful as possible.

The Real Purpose of Web Self-Service

In the past few weeks I have seen a few demonstrations of self-service offering in service desk tools, and have been reminded how knowledge is just not their main focus.  Most service desk tools are still focused on helping users open requests and incidents, contacting the service desk, and managing their issues.  As a knowledge management provider, RightAnswers has always designed an experience that is focused on finding the answers to users’ problems. 

An example is when I recently bought a new TV and needed to figure out how to get my universal remote to work with it.  I went to the Internet and to my cable provider site looking for answers on how to do it myself, not wanting to request that someone to reprogram my remote for me.   I found a wealth of information including step by step instructions with screenshots, as well as videos — I was up and running in minutes.   For me, this just drove home the fact that web self-service should help you find the information you need to solve your problem.  If it’s about something else, it’s missing the mark.

To be successful in this the user experience needs to support the proper behavior flow.  Search needs to be prominent but non-threatening.  Knowledge needs to be visible even before you attempt to search.  Search needs to be seamlessly reinforced at every turn, including when you decide to open a ticket or other requests.  Following these simple rules provides users an experience that delivers a positive outcome for them and the service desk—and keeps them coming back for more.

All Roads Don’t Lead Home

Nothing is more annoying than going to a website only to be confronted with multiple search dialogues that all search different repository.  I was recently on a PC manufacturer site and wasted half an hour searching their product support page for an issue I was having with a driver only to realize the driver-specific support page had its own search.  Not to mention looming in the top right corner there was yet another search box that one could use at any time to search for information about the company itself. 

Coming from a technology and development background and working at a company the makes search effectiveness its number priority, it’s scary to think it took me a while to figure out this company’s support search strategy.  I can only imagine what level of success my father would have finding issues for his own PC issues when I’m unavailable to play the role of family support desk. 

That said, we’re all really excited about some of the new approaches we’re taking to search that help customers develop an Enterprise Knowledge Foundation, and get rid of all of those confusing search boxes.  Tools like RightAnswers Enterprise Gateway enable customers with broader search initiatives leveraging Google Appliances, custom search tools, Autonomy, FAST, or a developed SharePoint portal to make our knowledge a part of their Enterprise search results eliminating the need to create a another search.  Likewise customers using other search tools can easily leverage RightAnswers as their Enterprise search portal; leveraging our knowledgebase technology to hold IT and non-IT knowledge and crawl other data sources in their organization where knowledge resides in various unstructured formats.

Next time you’re on your own corporate site or a consumer site and cannot figure out which road leads to the right answer remember RightAnswers can help you and your customers whoever they may be.

Four Questions to Ask a Vendor’s Professional Services Team

While professional service teams, or implementers as we like to call them, aren’t out to overcharge customers, asking a few questions up front can avoid embarrassing project delays and cost overruns.  While this list isn’t exhaustive it is a good start.

1.  Is your implementation fee based on a fixed fee or time and materials?

Buying services, buying licenses, buying a car… customers should know what they’re getting, how much it costs, and what factors will increase that cost.  Fixed fee implementations are always the best way for a customer to go, especially if the features and benefits of the software are straightforward.  If you know before buying that customizations to the software are needed, ask the professional services to price out that work, or if included in the price–get it in writing somewhere.  It’s in everyone’s best interest to have a clear description of what’s being built and delivered.  If you can’t clearly define what you need above and beyond the standard implementation, consider holding off on the extras until you’ve implemented the core offering.  You may realize you don’t need it!

2. Will you maintain the same resources throughout the project?

Depending upon the length of your implementation consistent resources can be critical to its success.  Make sure the vendor is willing to commit to the same resources throughout your project, barring any unforeseen or unavoidable situations.   A lot of time and effort is often wasted when customers lose the knowledge and relationships they’ve built up with the project team mid-project, and have to re-explain or indoctrinate a new resource into their environment.

3.  Are multiple environments included, and will you assist in their setup?

Depending upon your company’s IT policies and procedures, multiple environments may be necessary to test before an application can be put into production.  First, make sure you know your own company’s policies and procedures in this area. Secondly, make sure you’re licensed by the vendor to have multiple environments and that the implementation services are included to assist in the implementation of the product in these various environments.  Also, if you have a strict corporate policy governing the change management steps associated with the migration between these environments, let the vendor know about it.  It can only help you in the long run.  Otherwise the vendor will always be fighting against the currents of your IT policy to do it “their” way instead of “your” way.

4.  How long does it normally take to implement, and what can I do to impact that?

Just because you need the project completed by a specific date doesn’t mean it can be done by then.  Ask the vendor what the typical implementation cycle is, and what you can do to impact that if you need to speed up the process.  Also, ask what sort of situations the vendor has encountered that made projects take much longer than originally anticipated.  A vendor, especially one who doesn’t work on a time and materials basis, wants your implementation to go as quickly and as smoothly as you do.  Let their experience help you make that a reality.

Sometimes the most effective way to get answers to these questions, and others, before you run into a problem, is to try to engage the vendor’s professional services team during your software evaluation to understand their methodology, attitudes, etc.  This way you’ve started to form a relationship before the project begins, and there is a connection between the “pre-sales” speak and the post-sales reality that will help make the transition into the implementation phase seamless.