Our Viewpoint
Our business model is quite different from most other organizations you know. Growth is not as important as having a limited number of customers that we can service very well. Our goal is to have customer partners who we know well and who feel that they are getting great value and service from their vendor. We were successful with this model in the earlier Pinnacle years and we're confident we can do it again.
As the chart below shows, there are many compelling reasons to choose NextStep as your Service Desk provider.
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Business as usual |  |
NextStep |
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| High Cost. Nobody should have to pay sky high license fees and suffer costly year-long implementations, only to discover that your staff quickly become overwhelmed by a product's complexity and cost. | NextStep provides a sensible, risk-free alternative, pay-as-you-go with no long term commitment. Our philosophy is that we provide the right amount of capability and give you complete control. A monthly pay-as-you-go schedule guarantees that we must continually earn your business. |
| Aggressive Licensing. Higher Ed Institutions routinely manage multiple help desks. Many using current products simply can't afford the substantial license fees involved to create additional instances of the desk, for e.g. The Library, or Hospital. | NextStep supports multiple, virtual desks in the same application so different areas of IT, or the entire campus, can share the application but maintain their autonomy (and privacy) and not be bound by rules, forms, and business logic of other desks. You can even transfer a ticket between desks. |
| Ongoing maintenance. Products today are largely expected to be hosted in-house by the customer and require the services of a database administrator to not only keep them running, but to apply software revisions and patches as and when they came from the vendor. | NextStep uses an SAAS (Software As A Service) model, all you need is a web browser to start using the product. All database hosting and software revisions are managed by NextStep, a huge cost saving. We take care of the application; you take care of your business. |
| High Complexity. A long and seemingly 'essential' feature list is often used as justification for exorbitant license and consulting fees. Of the many Institutions that purchased these high-end products, we discovered that only a small fraction of a product's total capability was being used. A high-value return on the investment was never seen. | Nextstep addresses only the core functional requirements that we heard from our development partners, nothing more. We can get you up and running in short order. |
| A poor user experience. All but a small number of products left a lot to be desired in the areas of usability. As a result, efficiency suffers. High staff turnover only makes the training of new personnel more difficult when your software just isn't intuitive and well thought through. | NextStep believes that staff should need minimal training before they become productive. Whether engaging new staff, or the occasional part-time intern, the benefits of a modern interface that behaves with consistency regardless of the function cannot be overstated. NextStep provides a clean, intuitive experience. Beautifully crafted panels, clear navigation and visual cues never leave the user wondering just where they are in the application. |
| Rigid data content. Products often supply you with forms and data fields of a "one size fits all" nature, they have little flexibility. | NextStep supports Incident and Request forms the way you like them. You tell the application what fields of information are important for each type of incident to request, and which should be required. If you don't need them, they don't get in the way. |
| Data Integrity. In some products we were able to completely delete an asset, customer or incident from the application without any checking or audit trail being left. Lost without a trace. |
NextStep automatically tracks the significant events that occur. This provides a strong historical audit trail of what happened, where, when and who was involved. This is invaluable regardless of whether your interest is in catching up on an Incident's status, or perhaps tracking down a missing asset. |
| Little or no Asset support. Many products still do little to address proper asset tracking and accountability. Isn't it time you knew where your assets were, what they are valued, and what their service history has been? | NextStep supports the complete life cycle of an asset, from its creation, its assignment to a person or location, the transfers that have occurred, its incident history, the software assigned to it, right through to end-of-life disposal. Assets can easily be listed by customer and by location, comprehensive searching is also supported. |
