By Dick Stark

Just over four years ago RightStar hosted its first FootPrints 12 webinar with much fanfare and excitement. FootPrints 12 remains a solid BMC ITSM product offering with plenty of customer success stories. Last week I visited a brand new RightStar FootPrints retail customer, were we are off to a good start. The new account selected FootPrints after looking at many other competitors and made the decision in large part because it is a good value and very easy to use.

 It is no secret that FootPrints (FP) is #3 at BMC behind Remedyforce and Remedy, but according to BMC Sr. Product Management, FP is a profitable business unit, with no end of life plans in sight. It’s important to point out that just like BMC, RightStar’s FP business unit also continues to be profitable. RightStar provides consulting, implementation L1 Support and Remote Administration.

We are nearing completion of a medium sized FootPrints implementation for the government. The job is going so well that another group is very interested. What keeps FootPrints “in the game?”

Visuals/Views. First, v12 is not an upgrade to old FootPrints, it is a brand-new product. And it sure looks good. Overall appearance and colors are customizable by user and department. Multiple portals are now supported, e.g., IT, HR, and Facilities. The modernistic design consists of tiles, tabs, and bread crumbs. Additionally, there are plenty of attractive icons, e.g., Service Catalog IT items and non-IT requests like a hot or cold thermometer. (A blue thermometer means that you need to submit a facility request to turn up the heat—you get the idea.)

End-User Experience. What really jumps out, is that the BMC designers understand the importance of user adoption. RightStar’s experience with more than 800 deployments in 14 years is that the implementation of the toolset is the easy part. What’s difficult is getting clients to fully buy-into the changes that accompany a new process redesign and toolset roll out. Because of the emphasis on the end-user experience, the value of v12 to the client organization becomes obvious and real.

What’s impressive is that RightStar has plenty of v11 and v 12 success stories. Here are a few:

•  A 1000 store retailer with 100 seats of FP. RightStar hosts both FPSC and BCM. FP supports both IT and customer support.
•  A large well know fast food organization uses 100 seats of FPSC. They have lots of unique workspaces including gift card ordering, Facilities, and billing disputes.
•  A fast-growing hospital now has more than 700 FPSC seats supporting all the IT needs of more than 20,000 employees.
•  A utility has a large investment in ScanStar using barcode scanning for inventory and several check-in/check-out opportunities.
•  A private label food processor with more than 450 seats has several non-IT workspaces including HR and Capital Expenditure.