College Center For Library Automation Selects WebInteractive For Remote Support

The Situation:

Established in 1989 by the Florida Legislature, the College Center For Library Automation (CCLA; www.cclaflorida.org) that provides service and leadership in automated library and information resources to enhance the educational experience at Florida's 28 community colleges wanted to transition from a main-frame-based system of library automation to a Web-based client-server approach for e-support.

Library Support Technician Sharon Moskowitz explains that the CCLA is currently transitioning from a mainframe-based system of library automation to a Web-based client-server approach due to its efficiency, cost and modernization advantages. In terms of fixing remote computers, she won’t miss the old system. With the mainframe system, she explains that, “we couldn’t fix or control their computers remotely. We handled trouble-shooting over the phone and told them to ‘Go into the start menu and go into the second line and tell me what’s on your screen now,’ and so on. It was very cumbersome.

The Solution:

“Moskowitz says that the CCLA reviewed several systems and selected WebInteractive for several reasons:

1. Its price was very attractive
2. The technical ability to show “our desktops as well as theirs because we do so much in a training capacity that it was really important.”
3. The product was easy to use and helps make technicians more efficient

“Our clients were asking us to support their systems beyond our immediate geography in southern California, whether that was branch offices or mobile users, ” explains Cieslak. “Now we have clients with branch offices all over the U.S., as well as international customers. And it’s all done from our desk.” He says that cutting costs for them as well as their customers was another key factor.

“Our clients are always looking for ways to keep responsiveness up and costs down, and Web-based support allows us to do both. We can respond to the immediate issue and it keeps support costs down because we’re not charging for travel time, and so on.”

The Results:

Today, ITG supports hundred end users at its various customer’ s sites, and in WebInteractive found an ideal fit in terms of reach and security.

“You can think of us kind of like a help desk but we don’t know who is going to be sitting where when, or who will need help on a given day. So we were looking for something that didn’t require any pre-installation or set up, that was firewall friendly, and from a security perspective didn’t require us to open up all sorts of ports – sometimes we knew we wouldn’t even get that opportunity – so we had to have something that was very security friendly.”

From a ROI/cost perspective, Cieslak has no doubt he made the right choice: “There was a monthly charge for [the eSupport service] we were using before. We were paying so many dollars per month, per seat and at some point we were saying, ‘Wow, this is just too much.’ It’s not like we were losing money, but we were saying, ‘Hey this is a smarter model still.’ It gave us more control over our budget” when his company switched to WebInteractive.

Cieslak believes there are three major advantages and benefits of the WebInteractive system for ITG. He explains that first and foremost “it’s the ability to do real-time customer support. But we also use it for the sales process, to demo products to prospective end users. And all of this in a way that is a money making proposition because we apply the additional charge.”

As an added bonus, WebInteractive also supports ITG tele-workers: “Some of our employees are spread out as well. We have an office in L.A . but we have one employee in Scottsdale, Arizona. He actually uses WebInteractive all day long to provide technical support to our L.A. clients from his home office. So part of the value proposition is that while it allows us to service customers in real-time no matter where they are, our employees can also provide that service from anywhere.”

To recap, ITG uses WebInteractive in several capacities:

• For pre-sales “Webinars”
• To help close more sales
• For one on one post-sales technical support (outsourced help desk)
• For internal knowledge transfer and to so support tele-work

One particular recent situation summed up why Cieslak is so pleased with WebInteractive: “I had a situation with a client about sixty miles away a few weeks ago…I happened to have one of my staff people down there. She was in the middle of installing something and hit an issue and said ‘What do I do?’ So she called into the main office and I was there and jumped online and helped her solve the problem. So we’re supporting our own people as well [with WebInteractive]. We providing cross-support within our own consulting staff. It’s really helping us, in so many different ways, to put the right people in front the right machines at the right time with very little in the way of restrictions or overhead. We can get right on it and make it happen.”

Finally, regarding ROI, he said WebInteractive gives them equal or better functionality when compared to the ASP they were using before while eliminating the monthly cost. “Our payback was less than six months,” says Cieslak. “We’ve already paid for the product. At this point it’s just dollars saved above that.”

About Linktivity
Linktivity, a 20 year-old Tucson, Arizona-based division of Converging Technologies Inc., provides server-based communications and control products that enable person-to-person interactions through a browser window. Linktivity products include WebDemo, a Web-based, real-time conferencing and collaboration software tool, and WebInteractive, a real-time software tool that gives support professionals an efficient way to manage and resolve online support requirements for personal computers. For more information, please visit www.linktivity.com.

About Information Technology Group, Inc.
Information Technology Group, Inc.™ (ITG; www.itgusa.com) is a southern California-based technology consulting firm specializing in accounting software, custom programming, network design and implementation, training and support. Established in 1994 by a team of certified public accountants and technical experts, ITG has the unique ability to create comprehensive solutions that meet the changing needs of today’s growing businesses. Headquartered in Simi Valley, CA, the company has 25 employees and revenues of over three million a year.