New in the Help Desk

You may remember that we have been talking about outsourcing our Help Desk. We will begin a 3 month trial with a company called Triware Networld Systems (TNS) in September. We'll send details out soon. The IT team has been on a search for several weeks now to find a good fit for providing support to all of you. TNS came to us highly recommended by a vendor who has used them for over 20 years. We really like the founder, Benson Yeung, and we think you will, too, as well as the rest of his team.

Using someone else for help desk support will be a significant change -- and something new to all of us, too. We believe that if we find the right partner, it will be a great benefit. Some benefits we hope you'll find are:

• Quicker response time - There will be a larger team available to answer your emails and phone calls more quickly.
• More consistent availability - Similar to the above, since there will be a larger team, more people will be available. Beyond that, if one or all of us are tied up in projects or meetings, out of the office, or unavailable for whatever reason, the TNS team will be there.
• Shorter lead time for new or replacement computers - TNS will, as we build up the partnership with them, become our provider of new and refurbished laptops. They have a system that enables them to provide new computers within just a couple of hours -- instead of the days it currently takes.
• More onsite support - We plan to work out a way that the TNS team members can be onsite at all our offices (in No. CA only, at least to begin with) either on some kind of schedule, or an as-needed basis.

We're counting on your cooperation and patience as we explore this new model of technical support. It will be a learning experience. We'll keep you in the loop as we move forward!