Texas Company Gets Good Returns with Aldon Help Desk Solution

October 7, 2008 Alex Woodie

The installation of Aldon Community Manager, a Windows-based helpdesk package, is paying dividends for SWBC, a Texas-based financial services company. With the product’s capability to track bug reports and user wishes from request to resolution, while fostering development of SWBC’s i OS and Windows developers along the way, the company reports that its development organization has never run more smoothly.

Aldon Community Manager software is a helpdesk solution that allows users to submit bug reports and change requests to their IT department, while giving IT administrators tools to streamline how they handle the requests. The software is an integrated component of Aldon’s Application Lifecycle Manager (ALM) suite, and as such works directly with Aldon’s parenthetical change management solution for i OS, called Lifecycle Manager (IBM i Edition), or LM(i).

The implementation of Community Manager has given structure to SWBC’s IT help desk. Now, change requests are captured immediately from the source and routed automatically through pre-defined workflows. It notifies users and assigns them tasks when necessary and appropriate, while automatically tracking all communication among users, including notes, e-mails, and chats.

Last but not least, since Community Manager is hooked into Aldon’s change management software, there is a direct link from help desk activities back to the developer’s themselves. This means that SWBC’s team of 65 i OS and Windows developers can concentrate on programming instead of service tickets.

Gregory Lawler, the CIO of SWBC, says the combination of ALM and Community Manager is “redefining the relationship” between IT and the rest of the business. “With Aldon in place, our team is united, processes are turn-key, and development has never run more smoothly,” he says. “All of this functionality translates into increased productivity and streamlined processes . . . IT can focus more on business-building activities rather than administrative tasks.”