By Brett Winston

Q. What new barcode solution offers an innovative and cost effective way for FootPrints and Remedyforce users to receive, inventory, and reconcile discoverable and non-discoverable configuration items?

A. ScanStar, RightStar’s second-generation barcode product for the BMC SMB service management offerings, FootPrints and Remedyforce.

BMC, during a FootPrints version 11.6 update webinar this past week announced that through RightStar, barcode scanning for Service Core is finally available. And likewise, ScanStar now supports Remedyforce, BMC’s SaaS solution for similar cost and time-saving functionality.

Among the many advantages that ScanStar provides– accurate and consistent data entry is one benefit that our existing customers are thrilled about.  In fact, one of our current ScanStar users at a global biopharmaceutical company is using ScanStar right on her desktop PC!  Instead of using the standard Remedyforce interface for asset data entry and updates she has determined that running ScanStar in a Windows Mobile emulator is much faster for updating their CI’s. Of course, she can use the scanner to enter common equipment information, scan 50 tags, then create 50 CI’s with greater accuracy and many times faster than she could if she had to key in everything manually.

The ease of customization has provided great benefit to one of our federal government customers as well.  During the onboarding process (four hours of implementation and configuration services are included in each ScanStar sale), our customer realized that she had twelve additional Remedyforce attributes that had to be available to her scanner users.    Instead of having to spend additional time customizing the application specifically for them, we were able to drag and drop her fields right on to the scanner forms and had three custom screens ready in a matter of minutes!

RightStar has a host of features lined up for inclusion in the coming months.  We already have the ability to capture signatures  in the FootPrints version and signature capture for Remedyforce is not far behind.  Another big feature is underway – a Purchase Request module, that will work with both Salesforce and Remedyforce.  Once complete, we will tie ScanStar into that module to provide our customers even greater flexibility to create and track CIs in the CMDB.

Barcodes continue to change size, design, and gain new uses, but they will always be very important to configuration and asset management. I’m excited about the innovative ways our customers use ScanStar to manage their assets and improve the speed of data entry. I look forward to new solutions and additional customer success stories.