© 2011 SMT-X BV Publishing
General Introduction into SSP6
SSP6
General Introduction into SSP6
SMT-X BV Publishing 2011Introduction
1.1
SMT-X
SMT-X is the leading provider of self-service portal solutions for enterprises, helping some of the world’s most prestigious companies gain control over their request fulfillment processes. Our flagship solution, SSP6, has been engineered with the most diverse and demanding
environments in mind. Maximum flexibility ensures ease of implementation, interoperability, and maintenance – giving our customers and their employees the required solutions to manage employee request fulfillment in a centralized environment.
SMT-X was founded in 2003 with the vision of delivering a standardized solution for integrated request fulfillment to enterprise customers. In earlier roles, the company’s founders had
successfully completed the implementation of a request management solution at Honeywell and Starwood Hotels & Resorts. This real-life knowledge translated into future success. Today, SMT-X helps large companies across industries attain cost savings and operational efficiency through best-in-breed request process automation.
1.2
How we help
1.2.1
How we help Businesses
SMT-X helps businesses create a fully automated, single environment to manage employee requests and their fulfillment. By helping businesses establish a unified infrastructure to process requests, SMT-X helps businesses reduce administrative overhead and attain cost savings along the way.
Still too many businesses operate the old way. Many different stakeholders across multiple departments handle different requests using different types of rules, approval mechanisms and software applications. This not only creates a typical bottleneck in processing requests, but also leads to errors, reduced service levels, and a lack of insight into available resources.
SMT-X helps businesses address these issues. With SSP6, businesses have a single solution for the entire organization. Through automated workflows and interoperability with third-party
applications, SSP6 delivers an integrated, controlled approach to request management.
Businesses now have full control over, and insight into the entire request process – from start to finish.
1.2.2
How we help Employees
SMT-X helps employees independently manage and track their requests. Whether requesting access to a software application, booking travel, submitting an IT ticket or asking for a particular service – SMT-X helps employees by providing a single online access point to place requests and view their statuses.
In many business environments today, employees still request items the old way. Employees use email to request office supplies, a booking site to organize travel, and the helpdesk to submit IT tickets. Approvals are often requested and handled via email. In the absence of one system,
Introduction 5
employees must use multiple environments – taking them off their job and demanding more of their time.
These days are now gone. With SSP6, employees manage their requests in one place. SSP6 is a self-service portal that features an intuitive interface and includes all that an employee needs: forms, related documents, and links. Once the employee submits the request, SSP6 handles the rest. The automated workflow routes the request to the right person, ensures that approvals are obtained, and tracks the request until it has been fulfilled. Now employees enjoy a better way to submit and track requests, all within a straightforward, centralized environment.
1.2.3
How we help IT professionals
SMT-X helps IT professionals implement and maintain a centralized environment for request management. By providing maximum system flexibility and interoperability with third-party applications, SMT-X helps IT professionals implement a single, integrated request management system for the organization.
Today’s IT professionals face a growing challenge in supporting the business. System
centralization is an ever-important requirement, but integrating disparate systems is a daunting task. When it comes to employee request management nothing could be closer to the truth; multiple systems, customs and processes exist across departments and even geographical locations. Integration is difficult and centralization hard to attain.
Now with SSP6 IT professionals can readily implement a centralized system for request management without the headaches typically associated with integration, setup and maintenance. As SSP6 is based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), the system easily integrates with third-party solutions. SSP6 also features a proprietary process builder, providing system administrators a convenient way to create workflows for actions, notifications, approvals and decisions. And through the easy-to-use form builder, administrators can setup employee request forms in virtually no time.
Solution
2.1
SSP6
What if your employees could independently manage requests for things like a new PC, a
shipment, or access to a software application? Now imagine that those requests are automatically processed – properly routed, approved by the right person, and tracked. And then think of a system that does all this, but that you can also easily setup and maintain. And yes, the system should provide statistics, interface with your existing applications, and help you manage things like inventory.
In essence, what you really need is a system that disentangles requests from fulfillment – enabling any employee request while providing an interface to fulfillment tools anywhere in the organization. With SSP6, you have precisely what your organization is looking for.
SSP6 is a self-service portal that manages your employees’ requests and ensures that these are properly fulfilled. It’s an online form-based system that notifies stakeholders of requests and triggers the necessary workflows and approvals. Where needed, SSP6 can interface with any business application, reporting or ticketing system to register and complete the request.
Solution 7
Approve, Fulfill and Report.
In each phase we want to give users the best possible service:
· Request: Users should have the most convenient experience in ordering items or services from their providers. They should only see those request they need to see or are allowed to see.
· Approve: In case customer requests need approval, there should be a workflow that decides who need to approve and gives these people the convenience of mobile access and full information on the request
· Fulfill: Once requested and approved, works needs to be done. Where this can be automated, it should, preferably with existing delivery tools, where not, actors need to get all the required information to do the fulfillment as quickly and good as possible.
· Report: Once delivered, reporting on the delivered services is important. We want to know the quality of the delivery and the voting behaviour of approvers.
This document will explain in more details, what SSP6 has to offer in each phase of request fulfillment.
2.2
Manage the Portal Content
SSP6 is presented as a self service portal solution, managing requests from users. Requests can be anything, from a new PC, Access to an application, shipment request and meeting room
reservation to even a complete on-boarding of a new employee. Let's clarify what we mean by that in our setup. We have seen often with our clients that User requests are simply presented as a list of forms, without any guidance or explanation. To solve this issue, we created a Content Management System, which groups the content into Categories and Topics.
Each Topic has its own content page, with explanatory texts ad with added documents and links. Forms are then tied to Topics. By setting up a Self Service Portal in this way and with the support of the search function, Users can find their form easily. For advanced users, we added the
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Components
3.1
Request Forms
Whether requesting a new PC, submitting an IT ticket, or bringing new personnel on board, your employees require an easy-to-use and convenient interface. Likewise, creating and customizing this interface must be readily done so that administrators can deliver a solution that meets their organization’s specific workflows and administrative processes.
With SSP6 Request Forms both administrators and employees have the solution they need. Request Forms are at the heart of SSP6, enabling employees to submit requests in forms that adjust their content, based on the person completing it and answers given.
Central to each form is the concept of fields, which can be readily defined. Examples of fields include a text field, drop-down menu, radio button, selection lists, and much more. Every field has a label, default answer and, optionally, help text. A field may be categorized by using different headers. Sections (and subsections) may be defined, which appear only when certain answers are given. And fields can display lookup lists that are queried from any data source ensuring that, where possible, existing information is reused.
For employees, Request Forms presents a streamlined interface to submit and view the status of requests. When logged in, employees see an overview of all their open and closed tickets. They can see where their request is in the process, what action is required, and what the next step is. SSP6 Request Forms brings request and service management to a new level for both employees and administrators.
3.2
Web store
To get the job done, employees require quite a few items ranging from office supplies to laptops, to mobile devices. Now envision that your employees see and order all the items they need without the involvement from IT or office administrators. They simply log in to access a selection of items, all tailored to their role, business unit and geographical location. The SSP6 Web Store does just that.
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Flexibility is central to the SSP6 Web Store. Administrators can set up any number of stores without having developer skills. Stores may feature a range of products – laptops, printers, office supplies, training, mobile devices – you name it.
Of course, one size does not fit all. A product’s price may need adjustment based on country, for example. Employees in certain business units should only see specific items. Some products should have different configuration options based on an employee’s profile. And you may want to present product descriptions in different languages.
The SSP6 Web Store provides you with maximum flexibility to address the needs of employees across the organization. Like all of SSP6, the Web Store too is entirely multi-lingual. The
environment is fully configurable to meet any structure and requirement. It’s the solution that fully enables independent ordering by employees along with easy fulfillment.
3.3
My Items
You probably hear it quite a bit: “everything is all over the place”. When it comes to managing employee assets, chaos may reign freely. Who owns what, where and how is not readily viewable in one place. And administrators must frequently access multiple environments or use different means to manage anything from subscriptions, to plans, to software application licenses. SSP6 My Items addresses this problem. Through data upload and synchronization, the My Items module collects all subscription, licensing and ownership information from employees. When logged in, administrators view a clear list of all relevant information. They can then readily take action – say to cancel or renew a mobile phone plan. And all actions are of course linked to forms with pre filled data. When removing a phone plan, simply check the item(s) to delete. It’s that easy.
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SSP6 My Items collects all data in one place. It’s the solution that enables the hassle-free management of employee assets in a centralized environment. Managers get all the tools they need to see what their people are using, the associated costs and how that compares to other departments.
3.4
Workflow
Workflow is in the heart of the SSP6 system and it connects the phase of Request, Approve and Fulfill. SSP6 comes with a build-in workflow engine that support any business process. It allows administrators to easily define a step by step process, with a wide range of process steps like approval, decision points, external connectors and e-mail notifications.
A process step is first of all defined by its name, deadline and the Actor involved in this step.
- Action Step : an email is sent and a form is required to be filled in to continue - Notification Step : an email is sent, but no further action is required from the
addressee
- Approval Step : en email is sent and the system is awaiting a decision from the addressee in order to continue
To be able to build complex processes, also the following types of steps are supported: - Decision Point: Using a Decision Point, you can define what the next step is in a
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rules based on any field of the original form and any form from previous steps. With the common Operators ( =, >, =>, >, =>, !=) we believe you have the freedom to guide the ticket in any way that you want.
- HPSM7 Connector: this step triggers the adaptor to SM7 from HP. When a process is in this step it can simply send information to SM7, but it can also wait for a response back from SM7 in order to continue
- cXML step : using cXML technology, SSP6 communicates with an external ordering system, like AT&T, Dell, …
- More connectors can easily be added, also for your products.
For mobile users SSP6 also supports mobile browsers with an user interface specifically designed for smart phones. The mobile pages support all workflow steps and some Request Form and Web Store features.
3.5
My Tickets
Every user that uses the portal sees a clear overview of all current and closed requests. By clicking on them, the full details are shown, of both the form and the process, with indication of the
current active step.
Although the requestor can see all process steps, updates are only allowed by the current action holder or process administrators.
Users that want to have a total overview of the status of all pending requests, use the search function. This allows users to display all request that match the selected search criteria in 1 list, with graphical indications of the current process status.
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3.6
DataStore
The DataStore is a central point to manage data lists that can be used throughout the application and may be loaded from external sources. A typical example is a list of all countries. Multiple forms will use this data in a field. Instead of asking from the administrators to define this list for every form over and over again (with all the possible data inconsistencies), we created this central point for common data. By using imports and exports from and to Excel, data updates are done in a smooth and fast way. The DataStore also centralizes all translations & mail templates.
By making use of external data sources, any database can be queried, making it very easy to re-use data from existing systems. Think about cost centers, configuration managers, security information that can easily be used in forms and stores.
Roles & User Management 19
Roles & User Management
In SSP6 roles are use the grant users the right access to the portal. In roles administrators can configure which categories, forms, shops and workflow actions are available. That way, users will only see what is relevant to them and what is allowed. Through integrations with LDAP, users may get certain roles assigned automatically, based on information from LDAP. In that way, the maintenance on which users receives which role, is taken away from SSP and put within LDAP, where is belongs.
Summary
Organizations looking for ways to get control over their employee requests in times where they have to deal with a variety of service provider and at the same time want to provide transparency on the fulfillment of requests, SMT-X is providing the ultimate solution. The Self Service Portal has been made to manage the employee's requests and trigger the right fulfillment actions at the right time on the right place.
Get in touch today to learn how SSP6 can benefit your organization, by going to http://www.smt-x.com or contact sales@smt-http://www.smt-x.com.
