iSupport Software
Collaborative Help Desk Support

Collaborative software has certainly evolved over the years. “In the early ‘90s we were a small group of IT geeks that enabled organizations to deploy IT assets and computer networks,” recalls Daren Nelson, CEO of iSupport. He adds, “We then partnered with Lotus to develop an IT help desk application that would leverage collaboration tools in an application that actually solved a real need. Our application was used as the only example of how collaboration software could be optimized to provide better business solutions than what had existed before.” For thousands of companies who bought into the Lotus story, iSupport’s application served as the missing piece of the puzzle that ultimately helped organizations drive a good ROI.

According to Nelson, one has to apply collaborative software to business processes that are not linear. “I have seen many collaboration deployments fail because they didn’t understand their core business processes. We penned an ebook on this, The Complete Guide to the IT Help Desk, which can be downloaded for free on iSupport.com. It tells what firms need to do before they engage a software vendor,” he adds. “But the biggest reason collaboration projects fail is lack of understanding and lack of buy-in.” As a software developer the first thing iSupport does is address these challenges to set proper expectations. “Because we focus on specific needs, our value is easier to calculate than a lot of enterprise products,” expresses Nelson.

With its understanding that as support representative productivity increases, more users can move their customers to electronic channels of communication, iSupport brings together low-cost communication tools and merges them with automation to enhance efficiency. “For example, our Awareness feature automatically notifies customers if someone else has the same work item open and enables them to chat with the end users; our Chat feature automatically creates a work item from a chat and includes the chat in the work item history so that others can see previous work and assignments,” explains Nelson.

Because we focus on specific needs, our value is easier to calculate than a lot of enterprise products

An instance explaining the working of the process includes a large university with a diverse user community of staff and students who wanted a better way to record and manage IT incidents. The university was communicating with their end users via several communication channels like email, phone, and chat and didn’t have a help desk solution that provided a single interface for accessing, managing, and reporting on all of the issues they were receiving from the channels. Through iSupport deployment, the university was able to integrate the three communication methods they were already using so they could benefit from having all of their incidents in one location for their staff. Since the deployment, the customer has started to offer their end users additional channels to support, including a mySupport portal.

iSupport has been successful for numerous organizations by providing one of the best-integrated solutions, and developing their own technology. Nelson’s goals for the company are fairly simple—he wants to take the company to new heights which make an impact in the lives of the users. “I learned long ago that software development is a very fluid world, something one has to keep up on literally every day–don’t spend so much time on long-term planning and spend more time on embracing a culture of change,” concludes Nelson.