

March 2008 Company News \| From the Desk of \| Industry News Special Offer \| In-Depth Learning Meet Yolanda Thomas Zerion’s product is its people. Since it’s rare that our friends and clients get to meet all of the outstanding professionals that make up our company, this month we’d like you to introduce you to Yolanda. Residence: Birmingham, Alabama Hometown: Montgomery, Alabama Position with Zerion: Consultant What did you do before joining Zerion? I served as an Auditor for Alabama Power and prior to that I was a Contract Accountant for JEFFCO, where I served as a liason with HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development). What is your specialty at Zerion? I’m focused on making our customers happy. Without them Zerion wouldn’t exist. What is the best location you’ve traveled to for your job? I’ve traveled to so many wonderful places since becoming a part of Zerion; however, my favorite was being in the Northeast and seeing Cape Cod & Martha’s Vineyard for the first time. What do you like best about your job? I enjoy meeting new customers and adapting to their different personalities. It’s a fun challenge. What is your favorite “customer success” story? While on an install, I had a gentleman in my class that did not read very well. I took the liberty of providing him material to enhance his reading skills and spent several hours before and after work to help him one-on-one. My hard work really paid off and it’s a great memory. How do you spend most of your time when you’re not working? Whenever I’m home I spend time with my family and friends. I love going to the movies alone because I find it so peaceful. I also like to be involved with anything at my church. What is a little known, interesting fact about you? I’m a classical pianist. Favorite book or movie and why: My favorite book is Relationships: What it Takes To Be a Friend by Pamela Reeves. This book changed my life because it taught me the importance of relationships with family, colleagues and friends. I learned that people need people. My favorite movie is Beaches because of its focus on living life on purpose and making every day count. I am a huge Bette Midler fan. In one sentence, describe your philosophy on life and work: I try to live my life for today while planning for tomorrow. With work, I think that it is what you make it. Do what you love until you love it no more. If you don’t, you’re just wasting time you can never get back. Back to Top The economy is on everyone’s mind. It’s in the headlines of every newspaper, on the lips of every television reporter, and on the platforms of the presidential candidates. It's a touchy subject, but it’s no secret that our economy has slowed. Though the media likes to make a spectacle of it, this type of cyclicality is normal. And it had to happen at some point. It may be unpleasant, but it isn’t the end of the world. And in fact, whether you recognize it or not, the changing economy can present a great opportunity for your business. If the products just aren’t moving off the shelf as fast as they were a year ago, or if you’re brainstorming how you can cut costs, I encourage you to look deeper. Within the four walls of your operation, there is at least one thing you can do now that will not only help position you for the future, but possibly improve your current profitability. You can probably find a variety of ways to put extra time to good use. Start by asking yourself: what processes am I currently following that can be done faster, better or more efficiently? Instead of scaling back, how can I look ahead and invest wisely? Maybe the answer would include implementing RF into your warehouse, especially if you already own the system but haven’t had the time to install it. Maybe you can put a pricing matrix to work and stabilize your prices. Or if you have a matrix, maybe it’s from a legacy system and its time for something better. Perhaps you can take a step back and monitor your processes to determine where you can improve or what you can automate with your ERP system. Or maybe you can provide some refresher system training to your associates that will allow them to be more efficient. With examples just like these, we’ve seen clients find margin in places they didn’t know they could. If you do the same you’ll be more prepared than your competitors and better poised for growth when the economy rebounds. Tony King, Vice President 321.229.1089 Back to Top What’s happening with distribution, software and business? Zerion is committed to being a resource for our clients and friends. In the newsroom on our Web site, we have an RSS feed supplying new articles all the time. We also have some links to industry news. Here are some of the recent articles we found most interesting: HD Supply to Restart Growth Engine Embassay Selects Activant As Technology Provider Resource IT outsourcing no longer just about costs Locating your distribution centers Part 1: Re-engineering the distribution center network Want more news? Visit us at: www.zeriongroup.com/newsroom/industrynews.html Back to Top Try Our Help Desk Our in-depth learning piece this month poses the question of whether or not you need a help desk. But we’re offering an even better way for you to find the answer. Try it FREE! For one week free of charge, your employees will get to call on Nancy Ault, who can tap the depth of the Zerion team when you have questions or problems with your software or operations. Contact Tony King at 321.229.1089 or by e-mail to sign-up. Offer available until April 24, 2008. Back to Top March White Paper Could your organization benefit from a help desk? If so, should it be internal or external? This month, we’ve provided an in-depth learning piece titled, “Adding Help Desk Support: Four Questions to Consider Before You Leap” to help you find the answers you need. Adding Help Desk Support: Four Questions to Consider Before You Leap By: Nancy Ault, Consultant Technical advances have subtly, but rapidly, changed the nature of how we interact in the workplace. Perhaps most dramatically, technology has transformed the way we communicate with one another. Corporations have come to realize how seriously they rely on PCs - with downtime resulting in lost productivity for expensive and mission-critical knowledge workers. Before launching a help desk operation, managers should carefully assess their situation to determine whether operations can be handled in-house, or if an outsourcing arrangement would better suit the company's needs. The following questions offer key points to consider while investigating help desk options. 1. What are the competitive advantages or benefits of a help desk? While many organizations recognize the absolute need for a help desk, too many still narrowly view help desk management as a cost of doing business rather than an opportunity to improve employee and organizational effectiveness. In fact, the help desk is a management function critical to the company's competitive advantage. As the true impact of lost productivity due to technical difficulties emerges, this "cost of doing business" attitude is likely to change. Key benefits of a well-managed help desk operation include heightened effectiveness in a number of areas: cost and asset management, technology migration, upgrades, infrastructure management, problem management, and field service management. The help desk support area is evolving from what was traditionally viewed as a reactive role into one of a productivity-enhancing management function. A help desk can provide key insight into an organization's workflow, and deliver solutions to the organization. 2. What are the chief challenges in help desk implementation? Staffing is a key issue. The team needed to run a help desk typically includes the help desk agents answering calls and the management overseeing the operation. A desk agent position is often seen as entry-level, leaving inexperienced staff to handle calls. To compound the issue, these individuals often do not receive the necessary on-going training to keep up with changing applications and hardware configurations. Nor can organizations usually afford to allow off-line training for career development without impacting daily operations. This makes it difficult to tie help desk positions to a definitive and upward career path, hindering the recruitment process. Another issue is enabling the help desk to do its job effectively. Today, productivity equals competitive advantage, and companies strive to have every PC up and running consistently in order to achieve maximum productivity. However, the entry of personal computing into corporate life has opened a “Pandora's Box” for the information systems professionals that are charged with keeping things running smoothly. As PCs in the office environment are often configured according to personal preferences and work style, and are operated by people who are not trained in the field of computing, the help desk professional is tasked with the near impossible – supporting a highly uncontrolled and difficult to manage environment. Complicated and expensive infrastructure is often required to overcome some of these challenges. 3. What are the options for instituting help desk operations? Organizations have two options for help desk operations. The first is to build, staff, and support an in-house help desk. The organization is faced with many of the roadblocks mentioned above, including infrastructure investments and staffing difficulties. Help desks located within an organization's facilities are limited by the constraints of the infrastructure and the company's internal administration. The second option is outsourced help desk expertise, which is most often chosen by small to mid-sized organizations, but can work well for any business. These may be located on- or off-site, though on-site often means defeating the primary purpose of outsourcing, which is cost reduction through resource sharing. There are additional benefits to outsourcing, which are outlined in the fourth question below. 4. How might outsourcing my help desk be beneficial? The primary goal of help desk outsourcing is to reduce long-term costs by utilizing a vendor that spreads these costs across multiple companies. This, in turn, enables the organization to improve employee satisfaction levels, increase the number of incidents that can be resolved on the first call, decrease the turnaround time from initial call to resolution, and improve off-hours access to assistance. In an outsourced environment, the help desk vendor assumes responsibility for day-to-day operations, while working closely with the client to define key improvement objectives and establish long-term strategies. The client is able to focus on the business and the results of the help desk, rather than the administration. Instead of losing control, companies are empowered with a clearer picture of help desk efficiencies or bottlenecks through detailed reporting and metrics. For example, they can set goals like answering calls in 30 to 60 seconds, with 80 percent of incidents being resolved on first contact, and request regular detailed reports including time until call is answered, time to resolve problem, abandonment rate, overall system availability, and overall customer satisfaction. An outsourced help desk can also offer greater depth of knowledge and resources, as well as a more probable opportunity for appropriate and ongoing training of agents. They should be driven to resolve problems even before they ever occur. Technology has both helped and hindered the way we run businesses today. The implementation of a help desk can provide many benefits to help your operation keep its technology on-line, but it can also present challenges. Now that you’ve asked yourself four very important questions, and considered how the answers might affect your business, you should be better prepared to make a decision on how to proceed with help desk support. If you need more information on help desks, contact us. Back to Top	This month’s tip is to use five smart widgets for Solar Eclipse. In Solar Eclipse, the following widgets offer a quick look into commonly used queues and give real-time feedback about queue entries: Open Order Status Review Queue Procurement Confirmation Queue Outgoing Fax Status Queue Invoice Preview Queue Remote Order Entry Review Queue

March 2008

Company News | From the Desk of | Industry News
Special Offer | In-Depth Learning

Meet Yolanda Thomas
Zerion’s product is its people. Since it’s rare that our friends and clients get to meet all of the outstanding professionals that make up our company, this month we’d like you to introduce you to Yolanda.

Residence: Birmingham, Alabama
Hometown: Montgomery, Alabama
Position with Zerion: Consultant

What did you do before joining Zerion?
I served as an Auditor for Alabama Power and prior to that I was a Contract Accountant for JEFFCO, where I served as a liason with HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development).

What is your specialty at Zerion?
I’m focused on making our customers happy. Without them Zerion wouldn’t exist.

What is the best location you’ve traveled to for your job?
I’ve traveled to so many wonderful places since becoming a part of Zerion; however, my favorite was being in the Northeast and seeing Cape Cod & Martha’s Vineyard for the first time.

What do you like best about your job?
I enjoy meeting new customers and adapting to their different personalities. It’s a fun challenge.

What is your favorite “customer success” story?
While on an install, I had a gentleman in my class that did not read very well. I took the liberty of providing him material to enhance his reading skills and spent several hours before and after work to help him one-on-one. My hard work really paid off and it’s a great memory.

How do you spend most of your time when you’re not working?
Whenever I’m home I spend time with my family and friends. I love going to the movies alone because I find it so peaceful. I also like to be involved with anything at my church.

What is a little known, interesting fact about you?
I’m a classical pianist.

Favorite book or movie and why:
My favorite book is Relationships: What it Takes To Be a Friend by Pamela Reeves. This book changed my life because it taught me the importance of relationships with family, colleagues and friends. I learned that people need people. My favorite movie is Beaches because of its focus on living life on purpose and making every day count. I am a huge Bette Midler fan.

In one sentence, describe your philosophy on life and work:
I try to live my life for today while planning for tomorrow. With work, I think that it is what you make it. Do what you love until you love it no more. If you don’t, you’re just wasting time you can never get back.

From the desk of Tony King The economy is on everyone’s mind. It’s in the headlines of every newspaper, on the lips of every television reporter, and on the platforms of the presidential candidates. It's a touchy subject, but it’s no secret that our economy has slowed. Though the media likes to make a spectacle of it, this type of cyclicality is normal. And it had to happen at some point. It may be unpleasant, but it isn’t the end of the world. And in fact, whether you recognize it or not, the changing economy can present a great opportunity for your business.

If the products just aren’t moving off the shelf as fast as they were a year ago, or if you’re brainstorming how you can cut costs, I encourage you to look deeper. Within the four walls of your operation, there is at least one thing you can do now that will not only help position you for the future, but possibly improve your current profitability. You can probably find a variety of ways to put extra time to good use. Start by asking yourself: what processes am I currently following that can be done faster, better or more efficiently? Instead of scaling back, how can I look ahead and invest wisely?

Maybe the answer would include implementing RF into your warehouse, especially if you already own the system but haven’t had the time to install it. Maybe you can put a pricing matrix to work and stabilize your prices. Or if you have a matrix, maybe it’s from a legacy system and its time for something better. Perhaps you can take a step back and monitor your processes to determine where you can improve or what you can automate with your ERP system. Or maybe you can provide some refresher system training to your associates that will allow them to be more efficient.

With examples just like these, we’ve seen clients find margin in places they didn’t know they could. If you do the same you’ll be more prepared than your competitors and better poised for growth when the economy rebounds.

Tony King, Vice President
321.229.1089

What’s happening with distribution, software and business?
Zerion is committed to being a resource for our clients and friends. In the newsroom on our Web site, we have an RSS feed supplying new articles all the time. We also have some links to industry news. Here are some of the recent articles we found most interesting:

HD Supply to Restart Growth Engine

Embassay Selects Activant As Technology Provider Resource

IT outsourcing no longer just about costs

Locating your distribution centers Part 1: Re-engineering the distribution center network

Want more news? Visit us at: www.zeriongroup.com/newsroom/industrynews.html

Try Our Help Desk
Our in-depth learning piece this month poses the question of whether or not you need a help desk. But we’re offering an even better way for you to find the answer. Try it FREE!

For one week free of charge, your employees will get to call on Nancy Ault, who can tap the depth of the Zerion team when you have questions or problems with your software or operations.

Contact Tony King at 321.229.1089 or by e-mail to sign-up. Offer available until April 24, 2008.

March White Paper

Could your organization benefit from a help desk? If so, should it be internal or external? This month, we’ve provided an in-depth learning piece titled, “Adding Help Desk Support: Four Questions to Consider Before You Leap” to help you find the answers you need.

Adding Help Desk Support: Four Questions to Consider Before You Leap
By: Nancy Ault, Consultant

Technical advances have subtly, but rapidly, changed the nature of how we interact in the workplace. Perhaps most dramatically, technology has transformed the way we communicate with one another. Corporations have come to realize how seriously they rely on PCs - with downtime resulting in lost productivity for expensive and mission-critical knowledge workers. Before launching a help desk operation, managers should carefully assess their situation to determine whether operations can be handled in-house, or if an outsourcing arrangement would better suit the company's needs. The following questions offer key points to consider while investigating help desk options.

1. What are the competitive advantages or benefits of a help desk?
While many organizations recognize the absolute need for a help desk, too many still narrowly view help desk management as a cost of doing business rather than an opportunity to improve employee and organizational effectiveness. In fact, the help desk is a management function critical to the company's competitive advantage. As the true impact of lost productivity due to technical difficulties emerges, this "cost of doing business" attitude is likely to change.

Key benefits of a well-managed help desk operation include heightened effectiveness in a number of areas: cost and asset management, technology migration, upgrades, infrastructure management, problem management, and field service management. The help desk support area is evolving from what was traditionally viewed as a reactive role into one of a productivity-enhancing management function. A help desk can provide key insight into an organization's workflow, and deliver solutions to the organization.

2. What are the chief challenges in help desk implementation?
Staffing is a key issue. The team needed to run a help desk typically includes the help desk agents answering calls and the management overseeing the operation. A desk agent position is often seen as entry-level, leaving inexperienced staff to handle calls. To compound the issue, these individuals often do not receive the necessary on-going training to keep up with changing applications and hardware configurations. Nor can organizations usually afford to allow off-line training for career development without impacting daily operations. This makes it difficult to tie help desk positions to a definitive and upward career path, hindering the recruitment process.

Another issue is enabling the help desk to do its job effectively. Today, productivity equals competitive advantage, and companies strive to have every PC up and running consistently in order to achieve maximum productivity. However, the entry of personal computing into corporate life has opened a “Pandora's Box” for the information systems professionals that are charged with keeping things running smoothly. As PCs in the office environment are often configured according to personal preferences and work style, and are operated by people who are not trained in the field of computing, the help desk professional is tasked with the near impossible – supporting a highly uncontrolled and difficult to manage environment. Complicated and expensive infrastructure is often required to overcome some of these challenges.

3. What are the options for instituting help desk operations?
Organizations have two options for help desk operations. The first is to build, staff, and support an in-house help desk. The organization is faced with many of the roadblocks mentioned above, including infrastructure investments and staffing difficulties. Help desks located within an organization's facilities are limited by the constraints of the infrastructure and the company's internal administration.

The second option is outsourced help desk expertise, which is most often chosen by small to mid-sized organizations, but can work well for any business. These may be located on- or off-site, though on-site often means defeating the primary purpose of outsourcing, which is cost reduction through resource sharing. There are additional benefits to outsourcing, which are outlined in the fourth question below.

4. How might outsourcing my help desk be beneficial?
The primary goal of help desk outsourcing is to reduce long-term costs by utilizing a vendor that spreads these costs across multiple companies. This, in turn, enables the organization to improve employee satisfaction levels, increase the number of incidents that can be resolved on the first call, decrease the turnaround time from initial call to resolution, and improve off-hours access to assistance.

In an outsourced environment, the help desk vendor assumes responsibility for day-to-day operations, while working closely with the client to define key improvement objectives and establish long-term strategies. The client is able to focus on the business and the results of the help desk, rather than the administration. Instead of losing control, companies are empowered with a clearer picture of help desk efficiencies or bottlenecks through detailed reporting and metrics. For example, they can set goals like answering calls in 30 to 60 seconds, with 80 percent of incidents being resolved on first contact, and request regular detailed reports including time until call is answered, time to resolve problem, abandonment rate, overall system availability, and overall customer satisfaction.

An outsourced help desk can also offer greater depth of knowledge and resources, as well as a more probable opportunity for appropriate and ongoing training of agents. They should be driven to resolve problems even before they ever occur.

Technology has both helped and hindered the way we run businesses today. The implementation of a help desk can provide many benefits to help your operation keep its technology on-line, but it can also present challenges. Now that you’ve asked yourself four very important questions, and considered how the answers might affect your business, you should be better prepared to make a decision on how to proceed with help desk support. If you need more information on help desks, contact us.

This month’s tip is to use five smart widgets for Solar Eclipse.

In Solar Eclipse, the following widgets offer a quick look into commonly used queues and give real-time feedback about queue entries:

Open Order Status Review Queue

Procurement Confirmation Queue

Outgoing Fax Status Queue

Invoice Preview Queue

Remote Order Entry Review Queue