Which IT business management software is best

Hi Dale,

By ITBM do you mean "managing IT service businesses" for example:
-help desk and network management
-security, identity and data protection...
-application development (e.g. building apps)
-application support (e.g. managing custom built and packaged apps0
-project portfolio management
-internal or customer facing (impacts whether you need billing, revenue recognition etc)
other?

If you could highlight what your business needs are, it may help with responses towards those needs. Size of company, # of employees (in IT and in the org), multi location or not, all can influence suggestions.

Regards
Len

I have over 20 years experience using and building software packages to handle IT issues.

If you like the way your IT group is handling their duties but it is starting to make them feel overwhelmed, you might find it best to have your software team design a custom software package for your company. In my experience, all out of the box IT management software comes as, "This is the way everybody does it, so if you do it differently, you need to change."

That attitude helps companies that are handling IT issues helter skelter, but if your IT group needs to change, it can be a major hassle, and cost a lot of money to retrain everyone, including the people they take care of, to do things a new way. One of the biggest costs to a company is to introduce a new way of doing things; it can also shake up whatever it is your company does profitably and destroy what makes your company stand out.

If you decide you want to instill order to an IT department that is currently chaotic, ITIL has proven itself to be a well-designed format. So, in this case, make sure your new IT Service Management software is ITIL certified/compatible.

Two products I have worked with that are great in this avenue are HP Service Manager and SAP. Both products are expensive...starting around $250,000 and requiring an admin who will charge at least $150,000 per year. The money is well spent if you have 100 or more people on your network as these packages can almost double the efficiency of your IT team.

SAP has the nice added benefit of making it possible to integrate all facets of your industry into its operations. This makes it easier for larger companies to track all expenses. Don't ask me how as explaining that would take more words than this entire response. Ask an SAP rep to explain it concisely.

HP's attraction is how it integrates with the other HP products used to monitor your computer network.

Peoplesoft is a nice compromise for a smaller companies, but after my investigation into PS for a client, I found their sales team to be arrogant and their tech team to be sub-par. (Maybe the people I worked with were just having a bad day...or the peoples I worked with on more than one occasion were having several bad days, so only take my comments as personal experience and not as a reflection of the company as a whole.)

There are other software packages out there. Again, most use common practice as design format, so they probably will require you to adjust how you already do things.

One thing to note. Most of these companies know they have you by the nether regions because if your IT equipment fails, your company screeches to a halt, so they have marketed to determine the most revenue generating way to license their software. Some use number of users. Some use number of IT calls placed into the system.

As an IT guy, I HATE those guys who charge by the IT calls. All it does is force people to limit the calls they put into the system, forcing work-arounds that undermine the IT department, making the IT team look bad because someone is worried about the expense of using the software too much. IT guys start worrying about costs of getting the jobs done instead of getting the job done. That causes them to make mistakes as most IT guys are myopic and forcing them to think about more than one thing at a time destroys their ability to accomplish anything.

So, if one of the big packages is overkill for the size of your company, consider building it in-house. Your IT guys know how they do things and so know what they need to get the jobs done. Their supervisors know what they want to keep track of. By building it in house, you can build camaraderie with the IT group, and they will know the rest of the company values their input.

The smallest IT team I wrote software for was a two techs and their boss. The largest was running an HP Service Manager package servicing 3000 people.

The key is to figure out how much processing power the software maker says you currently need and quadruple it, for two reasons. 1. Once people find they are getting faster, better service, they will make service calls more frequently. 2. Once you find out the treasure trove of information you can glean from the information, you will be accessing the servers constantly. Keep your server separate from other software because you will be hogging the processing power of the CPU, and other software will just interfere.

HP was very easy for me, as an admin. I feel most accomplished with the simple MS Access package I wrote for the two man team.

This is because in a matter of hours, I wrote a simple package that allowed them to track calls, assign the calls to a tech, and track data for their boss to show their efficiency. The improvement of that team made them look so much more like a professional team that their supervisor got an article writeup in CIO magazine several years ago. Along with the software package, I taught them how to be professional on the phone when receiving a call, I taught them how to explain to the client what they were doing. I also taught their supervisor how to set expectations both to the clients as well as his superiors.

An Access package can be as simple as having a table with the needed information in appropriate fields, then designing a report to display the information. Separate the front end from the back end, and give the front end to each IT person. You will find you want more as you use it, and a programmer can easily add to it.

There are other aspects to consider. Security is key. Maybe you want to make it so IT techs can only enter tickets with their name assigned. Maybe you don't want them to change details to cover their mistakes. That kind of stuff should be handled at the interview and reject those who seem untrustworthy.

But, failing that, security is the most time consuming because it is the most vague. If a programmer is given specific instructions on what to do for security before he starts, it will be shorter in creation. It will be exactly what you ask for. If you add a detail, it may require reinventing the wheel, so ask for the moon before the rocket ship is designed just to make an earth orbit.

I can only give you the options of best business management software coz you haven't given any information regarding your business or any highlights.