Just hearing the word “schedule” can give people anxiety! It can be overwhelming to manage and schedule our life – from coordinating a child’s extracurricular activities to finding a time when 15 co-workers can meet; it is an everyday challenge.
“Make a schedule.”
“Stick to a schedule.”
“We need to schedule a meeting.”
“Schedule some time on my calendar.”
“There’s a scheduling issue.”
We all have our share of scheduling challenges, but IT managers are some of the hardest hit – whether it’s coordinating an installation, distributing a software update, deploying new computers to end-users or a myriad of other activities.
You might be thinking, “distributing a computer, what’s so hard about that?” It’s a time consuming and often complex task, especially for larger deployments and the current global pandemic adds even more complication. Finding the time and then working with individual schedules can be a logistical nightmare. Often, employees have unexpected conflicts and can’t be available, so they must reschedule, sometimes more than once. And think about doing this for 10’s or hundreds of employees. For example, one of our customers asked us to deploy thousands of computers in more than 70 countries, some in very remote locations. It’s enough to test the patience of even the most composed IT professional.
It’s Time for IT to Shift Away from Scheduling Drama
Within our ProDeploy Client Suite, we offer End User Scheduling. Dell takes over the coordination of the time consuming and logistical tasks – contacting the employee, scheduling, rescheduling as necessary and coordinating the technician. It’s a seamless process and reduces the workload for your IT team. Plus, we can reduce the time it takes to complete deployments and avoid unnecessary user downtime. Intrigued? Keep reading…
To get started, you are assigned a Dell Program Manager (PM), who is responsible for all the scheduling and coordination.
The devil is in the details, so hand Dell the trident – Your IT creates a plan of who and how they want to prioritize the scheduling; for example, they may want to focus on the oldest equipment first or on specific employee groups in a certain order. Your IT provides the direction and Dell executes.
Communication is key. The first email is sent by your IT advising employees that Dell will be contacting them about delivering a new machine. Meanwhile, the PM collaborates with IT to build out the schedule based on their recommendations and Dell’s best practices and expertise. The PM sends emails that explain the process and ask the employees to select a convenient date. We also send a schedule confirmation and a reminder three days prior.
But what if they don’t…or there’s a problem – We manage all the inevitable schedule changes and updates based on your criteria. In the case of non-responders, several follow-up reminders are sent. We do everything possible to complete all deployments, but there may be some situations where we’ll need your help.
We speak your language – Dell offers global communication support with translations available in: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. And we provide reporting on the status of the project on a weekly or as-needed basis.
We Understand Your Pain – Let Us Help!
So, the bottom line is Dell understands the pain point of scheduling, but not only that, we also know that efficiencies can save time and money. By putting the scheduling burden on Dell, IT can dedicate their valuable time to more productive ways to deal with their other challenges. Learn more about Dell’s ProDeploy End User Scheduling.
