Toward a lean and mean IT machine

Changepoint 6.0, the latest release of the PSA application from Toronto-based Changepoint Corp., is a comprehensive and flexible Web-based platform for managing all the activities of a corporate IT department or a professional services organization, including help desk requests, new deployment projects, and SLAs (service-level agreements).

Changepoint provides a central repository for project and resource information and allows IT managers, staff, contractors, and end-users to search for skilled resources, register the time spent on each activity, monitor project status, or submit new requests, depending on their roles. Changepoint allows users to automatically consolidate activities into projects according to easily defined criteria, a great benefit that facilitates cost accounting and project management.

Version 6.0 of Changepoint introduces support for multiple languages, seamless integration with Microsoft Corp. Project 2000, Web-based training, and other significant improvements for managing IT resources and tracking time and expenses. Changepoint 6.0 effectively addresses the two main issues confronting every IT organization: the need to improve the way IT staffers operate and the need to accurately assess the cost of each service they provide.

Probably Changepoint's most striking characteristics are its modularity and flexibility. The modular architecture allows corporate customers to tailor the product to their requirements without paying for features that IT departments don't need, such as the sales and marketing module.

Changepoint 6.0 also offers flexible deployment options. You can choose a phased implementation, adding modules as needed, and you can decide on traditional licensing for in-house deployment, rent-to-own, or fee-based hosted service, according to which pricing model makes more sense.

Changepoint is Microsoft-centric: In addition to Windows NT or Windows 2000, your servers should include IIS and SQL Server. You can run the client from Internet Explorer 5 or install a Windows version on your desktop. Travelers can work offline by installing a disconnected client on their laptops, or they can access the Changepoint server from a Palm Inc. device via the Web. The PC and browser-based clients have an identical, Outlook-inspired look and feel.

For our review, Changepoint provided a preconfigured system on a Windows 2000 server. Beginning to use the product was as simple as pointing our browsers to the server's URL and logging in. Changepoint suggests you allow one to two months to plan and deploy a typical implementation, and we believe that amount of time will be necessary to understand the functionality of the product and personalize it to your satisfaction. You will need more time if integrating Changepoint with your financial system requires custom programming or if you deploy Changepoint to multiple locations.

Managing the process

No programming is necessary for customizing Changepoint itself. Simply by acting on configuration tables, you can fine-tune the product to work according to the organization chart, the workflow, the geographical locations, and the terminology of your company. For example, you can define granular roles for users that allow them to perform tasks such as starting a new project, allocating resources to projects, and approving time or expense reports.

Logging in to Changepoint, we could see immediately how useful the product could be. From the GUI, we could view our to-do list, calendar, and support requests, as well as our colleagues' whereabouts. In addition, managers could view time and expense sheets, monitor the use of resources for ongoing projects, and generate instant summary reports and charts.

Although Changepoint's project tracking and workflow features help streamline daily operations, the main objective of a PSA solution is to assess the cost of each IT activity. Changepoint can track costs and revenues of your IT structure in multiple currencies and in accordance with different tax authorities, and can automatically convert figures to the main currency for consolidated reports. These are must-have features for companies with IT departments in more than one country.

Moreover, you can easily assign the cost of a service to a user department, or generate invoices and post transactions to your accounting system. To simplify integration with existing financial packages, you can configure Changepoint to use the same general ledger codes of your accounting system. You can transfer data by using built-in integration with popular financial packages, by creating ad hoc export files, or by custom integrating Changepoint with your own financial application using the Visual Basic or XML API.

Changepoint also can help improve and streamline the way the IT staff manages critical activities such as stipulating SLAs with user departments, scheduling and allocating resources to projects, controlling the time billed by contractors, creating an online knowledge base of support issues, or communicating with users and customers.

For end-users, customers, contractors, and others outside the IT department, Changepoint offers guest access via a scaled-down version of the client, which supports both Microsoft and Netscape browsers. Guest access allows users to check the status and ongoing cost of a project, search a database of solutions to technical support problems, or enter a new support request that will automatically appear in the work queue of the appropriate technician. Guest access bears an additional cost, but it can save your IT staff significant time and effort. Think of it as a self-service desk for your end-users or customers.

Offering a coherent interface and an integrated database that should ease the management of all IT activities, Changepoint can help reduce the cost of IT projects and services while helping executives understand where the company is spending IT money. These benefits make the product worth looking into for any large IT staff.