ProjecTrak Help Desk's extensive reports help managers analyze problem trends and track support team performance metrics. I found some reports more useful than others. For example, the Statistics By Caller report lets you determine your problem end users and those who need training. One of my favorites is the Call Volume by Hour, which shows you call surges on an hourly basis so that you can manage the support team's workload and plan staff accordingly. Reports can be generated based on many criteria, and the software provides the ability to sort reports in many different ways. The report format is good, and I was able to easily use the graphs or the included Microsoft Excel export function. I found reporting to be better-than-average and easy to use.

ProjecTrak Help Desk offers the ability to create SLAs (Service Level Agreements), which are useful in setting end user expectations and in making sure that the help desk delivers on its promises. Some of the other items that round out the software are the Client Surveys (they can be sent out based on predefined criteria, such as after every fifth call from a particular user, or on an ad-hoc basis), and, as mentioned above, the Technician Coaching function, which helps you as a manager coach individual technicians in becoming better at their jobs.

I found the ProjecTrak Help Desk to be a mature and solid player in the customer service and IT support fields. Overall, it's an excellent call center software package, giving the user everything needed for a sophisticated customer and incident tracking software.

ProjecTrak Asset Manager
If tracking hardware and software in your organization has become like an archeological dig, you probably already know that the right asset management software is not simply a convenience. It will actually save you money almost immediately by maximizing the use you get from existing hardware and software and by helping you avoid expenses and overpayments for technology and services you don't really need.

ProjecTrak Asset Manager is an ideal tool to track what you have, where it's located, and to whom it is assigned. You can quickly retrieve exact information about hardware and software assets, including configuration, maintenance, lease, and technical support. By managing the ownership of IT assets throughout their lifecycle, from planning to disposal, it helps you make business decisions such as returning leased hardware equipment, upgrading equipment, etc.

The complete software tracking capabilities will show you what software is licensed to each PC or server at each location for every user. If you find yourself paying for too many software licenses or losing track of where your software is installed, you'll quickly appreciate the usefulness of this information.

Several screens (for example, the one shown in Figure B) provide access to a comprehensive inventory of assets:

FIGURE B

Here you can see hardware assets by type. Click picture for a larger image.

By using this product, you can start answering questions about which current assets you have, what their associated costs are, and whether they are providing value to the organization. After using ProjecTrak Asset Manager in a real production environment, I realized that it provides opportunities for savings in ways I hadn't even thought of before. Here are some that I found: