Best Practices In Application Support

Best Practice are a set of ideas or thoughts which helps in execution of project. A best practice is a method that has been generally accepted because it produces superior results and helps in smooth driving of the project. Best Practices is a standard way of doing things which accelerates work and reduces intricacies. Best Practices in Application Support helps employees to efficiently complete tasks in time, reduces complexity, reduces work and solves issues faster. Best Practices are prevalent to most of the companies or industries regardless of specific domain like Project Management or Audits. Also, new standards for Best Practices can be achieved by defining a problem, analyzing the problem, testing the problem and then finding a solution to the problem by implementing best practices as an improvement measure. In cognisance, best practices should always be defined so that it improves quality and reduce waste. Best practices helps in improving skills of company’s workforce. Best Practices for Application Support project are as follows:

• Raising a ticket or request for every query: 

A request or ticket should be raised for every query whichever comes first for e.g. user login issues, unable to view report tab etc. This type of requests come often so a request should be raised for every query. It helps in maintaining records of the tickets and narrows down the search. In future, if similar query comes, then you can recheck from previous ticket for solution on Service Desk. One should have best practice of raising a ticket or else it may cause complexity in tracking records in future.

• Conduct Monthly Status Calls:

It is essential for a project to have a smooth workflow, so it is important to conduct Monthly Status Calls. This monthly calls helps in billing activities, discussions on open tickets (queries), discussing issues and remedies related to project, maintaining Client relationship and helps in providing remedies. Monthly Calls in Application Support is must as it gives the update or status of project. Also, MoM (Minutes of Meeting) after monthly status call is necessary as it contains discussion occurred on call. 

• Monthly Billing Activities:

Billing activity should be performed every month so that company’s revenue does not get affected. Billing activities include all tickets raised last month, description of tickets and efforts billed per hour for those tickets. Billing activities should be discussed in Monthly Status Calls or Monthly Billing Calls. Also, Monthly Billing activities is a best practice because it helps in keeping update of the payment received and payment yet to be received.

• Weekly Reports:

This is the best practice for maintaining record of tickets as weekly reports contains open tickets, description of tickets, status of tickets etc. Weekly Status Reports can be Service Desk Ticket Reports (SDT Report) or End of Week Report (EOW Report). This detailed reports of tickets can be extracted from the application used for raising service requests. This gives the Top management an idea on the amount of efforts spent and the number of tickets raised based on which they can efficiently do the resource planning. It also helps in Project Management in Application Support. 

• Follow-up on Open Issues:

This helps in updating the status of ticket. By following-up with the user one can know if the respective query is solved or still the user is getting the same error. So best practice is to follow up on open issues so that ticket or request can be closed based on user’s response. If follow up is not done regularly then it may lead to disturbance in workflow of project. Also, Open issues on Service desk should be updated regularly because it helps in providing latest updates while a report is extracted from Service Desk.

• Updating Credentials:

The login credentials for various Applications involved in the Support Project should be maintained in a file and updated (if changed) regularly and shared with the team. This helps team members to login with their updated passwords without much hassle. Also, the credentials file should be updated with the new version so that it becomes easy for team to search for latest updated credentials.

• Continuous improvement:

Continuous improvement is a necessity for every project in an organization. Also, team should spent one hour daily to identify gaps in Application Support Project process and help in expressing new ideas or ways to fulfill those gaps in Application Support Process. Continuous improvement should be taken under consideration for an essential growth of a company. 

• Periodic Trainings:

Periodic Trainings should be conducted if any new functionality is added in Application. If periodic training is not conducted then it becomes difficult for team in understanding new functionality. Thus, organization should have best practice of conducting trainings whenever some functionality is added or whenever a new user is on boarded.

Conclusion:

Best Practices in Application Support helps in enhancement of the process thus improves efficiency. Also, best practices are accepted by everyone for e.g. a new employee joining an organization and working on an Application Support Project should have this best practices for smooth functioning. Thus, organizations should have best practice implemented so that teams will have right path to reach the goal of the project.

About Author:

Mikhil Chauhan is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, he actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. He can be contacted at: mikhil.chauhan@spluspl.com