The need to simplify and reduce the amount of information and decisions in our everyday lives is becoming more and more important in the Information Age. Whether it’s deciding what to wear or what food to purchase, we are bombarded daily with information and choices. Even a weekly shopping trip can lead to decision exhaustion with the typical grocery store having tens of thousands of products. Wal-Mart has 125,000 items[1]and that’s not a Wal-Mart Supercenter.
Steve Jobs, for example, simplified his day by wearing his signature black turtleneck, jeans and New Balance sneakers. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also dons his own grey t-shirt and jeans “uniform.” When asked why he wears the same thing every day, Zuckerberg replied:
“I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community”[2].
With all the information that bombards us daily, how do we know what to pay attention to? How do we get visibility into what matters most so we can make smart decisions?
A kaleidoscope of insights
The need to simplify information and have visibility to what matters most also applies to our IT environments. As complexity increases and digital transformations begin, insights into IT systems and activities are vital. This is why we have created MyService360TM and TechDirect – technologies that get you the information you need to work smarter.
The MyService360 heads-up display is a real-time, real-simple visualization of your IT happenings. You will see:
- Support requests and escalations
- Support request, escalation and part replacement trends
- Available software upgrades
- Overall environment health score
- Shipping status of replacement parts and scheduled technicians
- Service contract expiration dates
- Recommended actions for you to take
TechDirect gives you visibility into your (1) support, (2) deployment and (3) staff training activities. You can request support and replacement parts anytime. In fact, over 1.4 million parts were dispatched through this tool in the past year. You can even track automated proactive and predictive PC health alerts in TechDirect when using SupportAssist. PC deployments for ProDeploy Client Suite orders are managed here as well, giving you a single source for all your deployment details and communications. If you have a help desk, you can leverage the TechDirect APIs to integrate case management, warranty status and parts dispatching capabilities. Access to Dell Certifications and Authorizations for staff training is available too.
Decisions in the light
You don’t have to rely on sorting through lots of information from disparate places to help make a good decision. You need insights and you need them quickly as IDC has found over 70% of IT staff time is spent on routine operations and support[3]. TechDirect and MyService360 give you the information you need to get out of the maintenance mode grind and work smarter.
With the information MyService360 provides, you can:
- Easily manage support requests and escalations
- Keep your software up-to-date so your environment stays secure
- Know if your environment needs attention based on its health score
- Better plan replacement part inventories
- Track replacement parts and onsite technicians
- Plan service contract renewals
- Know what requires your attention
And with TechDirect, you will know what your technicians are doing across your environment, whether they are supporting products, deploying them or even taking product trainings.
[1] Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (2017). http://corporate.walmart.com/_news_/news-archive/2005/01/07/our-retail-divisions
[2] Abbruzzese, J. (2014, November). Why Zuck and other successful men wear the same thing every day. http://mashable.com/2014/11/17/mark-zuckerberg-and-other-insanely-successful-people-wear-the-same-thing-every-day-and-for-good-reason/#.bGSccZeTZqU
[3] IDC Converged Systems: End-User Survey Report 2015; N=300.
