The Fast Track to Service Management Success: Software-as-a-Service

The Fast Track to Service Management Success: Software-as-a-Service SPONSORED BY WEBEX Laurie McCabe, VP SMB Insights & Solutions AMI-Partners 546 Fifth Avenue April 2007 Suite 22 _____________ New York, NY 10036 1-212-944-5100 www.ami-partners.com AMI-Partners Ask_ami@ami-partners.com White Paper ©2007
1 BUSINESS APPLICATIONS AMI-Partners & Solutions White Paper

Section Page Intro 3 Section 1: Section 1: SMB IT Hurdles - Limited IT Staff and Resources 3 Section 2: Service Management Roadblocks 5 Section 3: Creating a Service Management Roadmap 6 Section 4: SaaS: The Fast Track to Service Management Success 7 Section 5: Selecting a Service Management Solution 8 Summary and AMI Perspective 11 Figure 1: Small Business Snapshot: Demographics, IT Assets and 4 Resources Figure 2: Medium Business Snapshot: Demographics, IT Assets and 4 Resources Figure 3: Pressure to Support Geographically Dispersed End-users 5 Figure 4: Differences between Traditional Software and On-Demand 7 Models Figure 5: Guidelines for Evaluating Service Management Solutions 10 About AMI-Partners 12
2 AMI-Partners 546 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10036 212 544 9100 http://www.ami-partners.com ask_ami@ami-partners.com ©2007 BUSINESS APPLICATIONS AMI-Partners & Solutions White Paper
The Fast Track to Service Management Success: Software-as-a-Service To successfully compete in today's marketplace, small and medium size businesses (SMBs) must run efficiently. The right technology solutions can help SMBs to do this by improving business operations, employee productivity and profitability. However, as their dependence on information technology grows, it becomes more difficult for IT service desk personnel to adequately support end users and the solutions that keep the business running smoothly. Unlike larger enterprises, SMBs frequently lack the IT resources to manage the growing array of hardware, software and systems necessary to support the business, and provide adequate levels of service to users. Web-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) or on-demand solutions can provide SMBs with a fresh approach to solving this dilemma. A SaaS service desk solution offers IT managers the feature-rich, real-time functionality they need without the burdens of deploying, managing and supporting costly hardware and software in house. This paper begins with a discussion of the challenges that SMBs face in managing and supporting the IT solutions they need to run their businesses and examines the obstacles they face trying to effectively meet service management objectives. It then explores strategies for selecting a service management solution and how the SaaS approach can help SMBs meet these support challenges without increasing the burden on overworked IT personnel. Section 1: SMB IT Hurdles - Limited IT Staff and Resources Just like their large enterprise counterparts, SMBs want to deploy IT solutions that help them to succeed in an ever-changing marketplace. Faced with increasing pressure to compete more effectively against larger firms SMBs need to implement IT solutions to streamline and manage a variety of business processes. For example, SMBs might need to deploy customer relationship management (CRM) services to increase sales and profitability, install inventory management solutions to cut inventory costs, and implement human resources solutions to manage employee-related issues and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. By successfully deploying these kinds of solutions, SMBs can make more informed business decisions, reduce risk and compete more efficiently in the marketplace. While SMBs have similar requirements and objectives as bigger organizations, they have smaller budgets and fewer IT staff than larger firms. For example, companies classified as small businesses, those with 1 to 99 employees, often have constrained IT budgets and staff. As indicated in Figure 1, small businesses often may have only one full-time person-typically an IT generalist-to handle a complex array of IT resources.
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