ISOdx in Action
Trucking “right” along
A third-party hardware support company had:
- Repair trucks going to customer sites when they weren’t necessary
- Trucks being sent to customer sites without the correct parts
- Great difficulty being proactive in solving customer hardware problems
The guesswork involved in everyday business was not only costly, but a major productivity obstacle as well.
“If we can just fix these challenges, we can be much more competitive and elevate customer satisfaction,”
this prospect told the ISOdx team.
ISOdx was used to provide alerts to tell that third-party support company when a part goes bad — plus provide the part number, and identify the location the part resides in within the server. This allows the third-party customer to:
- Send a truck only when necessary;
- Send a truck with the right part at the right time; and
- Fix the issue immediately with no guesswork.
As a bonus, inventory control is much easier because the company knows exactly what parts are required
in each region and can keep lower inventory levels.
Taking it to the bank
A U.S. company providing software support to banking companies had a client in South Africa. They did
a software upgrade for their SA client in their own lab — and in the lab, the upgrade performed correctly.
On the client’s site, however, the upgrade didn’t work. The support provider struggled with this issue for
nearly two months, trying to determine its cause.
Enter ISOdx. Using ISOdx, the company did a server-to-server comparison and immediately determined that a DLL was not upgraded during the upgrade process. They inserted the correct DLL, and everything worked properly.
No need to downgrade the upgrade
A tech support client of an independent software vendor (ISV) had an issue. The ISV support team recommended the client upgrade to a new version of a third-party tool. After the upgrade, the client called to complain that everything was running so slowly the system wasn’t usable.
The suggested fix had worked in the ISV test lab, but not on the client site. The ISV — an ISOdx prospect at the time — called to see if ISOdx could help. ISOdx took a snapshot of the problem machine and compared it to the working lab system, and quickly determined that the third-party DLL did not upgrade during the upgrade process. Once the correct DLL was put into place, performance improved dramatically.
Using ISOdx, it took just 20 minutes to determine the issue and correct it. The ISOdx prospect became a customer and the ISV client became happy campers.
It’s enough to put you in the hospital
In the middle of the night, a hospital’s entire IT system began to fail. Realizing that critical issues were at stake,
the support team was called in and immediately ran ISOdx to try and determine what happened. Within minutes,
it became obvious from ISOdx reports that an outside lab company had initiated changes that disastrously impacted the hospital’s IT system.
The hospital called the surprised lab company to rectify the situation. “How did you know what systems this change was affecting?” the lab asked. “We didn’t even know the change would affect those other systems.”
Ah, ISOdx. Enough said.
Got change?
Over and over again, an independent software vendor’s (ISV) client complained that the software solutions
they purchased from the ISV did not work properly. Even though the ISV thoroughly vetted the solution in the
customer environment they had replicated in the ISV lab, when it was on the client site, there were issues.
This ongoing strain between the two companies was alleviated when the ISV began using ISOdx. Suddenly,
the ISV could prove the client had made unreported changes in their own environment, preventing the software
from working properly. Once the client realized the ISV could pinpoint these system alterations and stop the
finger-pointing, the complaints stopped — along with the mysterious changes. “It actually brought about a
positive culture change for us,” the ISV told the ISOdx team.