Most organizations are unaware of how much they are spending on end users' IT requests.
    If they knew, they would quickly move away from their current processes and use rms.

    Max Rosenblatt, 2004



 

About 75% of maintenance costs are spent for providing enhancements (in the form of adaptive and perfective maintenance) (Martin, 1983; Nosek & Palvia, 1990; van Vliet, 2000).

Why should your care?

Annual software maintenance cost in USA has been estimated to be more than $70 billion (Sutherland, 1995; Edelstein, 1993).

End users usually make their requests by email, voice mails or notes dropped on desks. When IT fails to deliver their requests, the finger pointing begins. If a formal system is used at all, it is a help desk or bug tracking system. Neither works well because user defined changes and enhancements require specialized software.
10% of software spending is on initial development
90% goes to "perfecting software" - enhancements and bug fixing
65% of that goes to user-driven enhancement requests

This means that users requests account for 59% of software expense. Companies spend tens or hundreds of millions on the first 10%, initial development. Most companies use ad-hoc processes to collect users enhancement requests. The most common structured method is email forms to a central mailbox. According to recent estimates, the spending on perfecting software is $70 billion.

Think of your users as your customers. They will be happier if you provide them with proactive feedback about their requests. You can improve service by simply sending out emails during the request fulfillment life cycle. You expect merchants to do this when you order over the Internet. Why not provide the same service level to your users. Also, as IT organizations become geographically dispersed either through internal growth into lower cost cities or towns or through outsourcing, time and geography become impediments. You need a system to help you overcome this.

The Request Management System (rms) is software that specializes in end user requests. rmrms uses the Service Delivery Management (SDM) model of Catalogs containing user-oriented forms. Users fill out the form to create a Service Request. The rms workflow engine then manages the Request through the fulfillment process. The automatic notification system sends emails to the Request owner allowing them to track the progress on their Request. Request fulfillers receive emails when they need to perfom some service. This continues through the lifecycle of the Request resulting in an audit trail of request activities.

Setting up rms is easy. In fact, IT OnTime’s experience shows that it takes up to ten times as long to develop a logical workflow as it does to implement it within rms. An experienced rms administrator with good workflow definition skills can set up a typical catalog in two hours

WHEN TO USE rms
  		• Web site development, maintenance and support
  		• Computer application maintenance and support
  		• Clean up phase of any programming project
  		• Any development project where the size and nature of the tasks are not known when the project begins.
    You can try rms by clicking here or order rms by clicking here.
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