IDG Research Survey Reveals Top Initiatives of IT Investment, and Drivers for Cost-efficient Change Management

Business Wire, Sept 19, 2007

FrontRange Solutions white paper explores survey findings on how IT service management can propel business transformation via Alignment, Automation and Integration of IT Systems

DUBLIN, Calif. -- By ensuring high service levels, IT becomes a strategic business enabler, providing employees with the support they need so that they can better serve external customers, according to FrontRange Solutions, an established global market leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), IT Service Management and Voice applications for the mid-market.

A recent IDG Research survey, summarized in a September 2007 CIO Magazine article and sponsored by FrontRange, says that it is equally critical that the IT group have the ability to align services with business goals. Doing so helps to increase velocity in today's fast moving markets through speedier and more cost-efficient change management and more robust, automated workflows.

A new white paper that includes the survey's results is available from CIO Magazine Web site.

The survey reveals that the number one IT initiative today - and the top driver of IT investments - is aligning IT and business goals. The number two initiative: Improving the efficiency of service delivery. At the same time, IT leaders view building and retaining customer loyalty as one of the top three challenges they face.

For many IT organizations, the desire to achieve this degree of partnership and alignment with the business is driving the adoption of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL[R]) best-practices framework for IT service management processes - as well as solutions that support it and other processes, governance and compliance guidelines.

Automate and Integrate

On the IDG Research survey, 47 percent of respondents considered automating workflows to be the process in greatest need of improvement. In the service management realm, applications often are not flexible enough to help a business automate customized workflows that are critical to their requirements.

But IT organizations face a potential pitfall if they don't choose a next-generation IT service management solution that has been architected from the ground up to support best governance practices such as ITIL, ISO 2000 and COBIT, compliance requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, a true configuration management database (CMDB), open standards-based integration, and modern service-oriented applications.

"The architecture is something you don't think of every day, but the architecture of a service management solution is something you live with every day," says Kevin J. Smith, vice president of products at leading IT service management vendor FrontRange Solutions. "If you don't have the right architecture it becomes a real barrier to making these systems successful."

About FrontRange Solutions

FrontRange Solutions develops award-winning software and solutions used by more than 130,000 companies and over 1.7 million seats worldwide to manage a wide variety of business relationships and provide exceptional service. FrontRange product families are designed to optimize customer investment by their interoperability, specifically for small-to-medium-enterprise (SME) and distributed enterprise organizations.

Solution families are defined by three customer-centric market areas: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) including GoldMine[R]; IT Service Management including the HEAT[R], ITSM and Infrastructure Management product lines; and Voice, which integrates IP business phone systems, IP telephony and advanced contact center software solutions improving customer relations cost-effectively. This comprehensive product set provides a unique customer service and support scenario, unrivaled in the market today.

Customers representing 44 percent of the Fortune 100 and 76 percent of the FTSE 100, include Coca-Cola, Shell Oil, Prudential Securities, Electricite de France, Mack Trucks, Campbell Soup, Avaya, Bechtel Corp, Bank of America, and Turner News Network. For more information, call (800) 776-7889 or visit www.frontrange.com.

GoldMine, HEAT and other FrontRange Solutions products, brands and trademarks are property of FrontRange Solutions USA Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. Other products, brands and trademarks are property of their respective owners/companies.