Business Value
The challenge
In today’ business world, both IT decision makers and executives are being forced to justify any
investments that they make, especially technology upgrades. To ensure that they are not left out
of the business management process, IT managers will have to learn how to communicate and
justify their IT strategies in business value terms.
By identifying common business challenges that our customers face, we can better focus our
business value proposition and concentrate on how Windows XP Professional can add value.
Windows XP incorporates years of customer feedback on Windows 2000, Windows NT, and
Windows 9x and addresses the following key customer issues:
Increasing the productivity of employees
Reducing the cost of managing an IT infrastructure
Streamlining business processes
Communicating with customers and business partners
Increasing the productivity of employees
The productivity of employees can be increased by making it easier to access information, work
with programs more efficiently and more quickly accomplish tasks. If each individual can work
more efficiently, they will contribute collectively to making the overall company more efficient.
People become more efficient by accomplishing more tasks in less time, generating higher quality
output, and by deriving more satisfaction from the work they are doing.
Windows XP Professional helps organizations to increase the productivity of employees in
several key ways:
Fresh visual design - common tasks have been consolidated and simplified, and new
visual cues have been added to help users navigate their computers more easily. A
cleaner work environment also allows the user to be more efficient and users can find the
crucial data and applications they need quickly and easily. All of these settings can be
controlled via policy, so IT administrators can decide what features are most appropriate
for their environments.
Increased mobility - using a laptop computer in the office and on the road is much easier
with Windows XP. Remote access to your PC and all of your data and applications,
enhanced support for offline files and folders, and support for new hardware power
management features revolutionizes the way that users work remotely.
Simplified networking - connecting PCs to the corporate network is much easier with
Windows XP. New administrative tools and support for the latest wireless network
technologies let you use 802.1x wireless networks easily and securely.
Global support - the Multilingual User Interface add-on pack for Windows XP Professional
lets you install and support a single version of the operating system, rather than one for
each of the languages your employees may speak. This makes it easier to deploy
business solutions worldwide.
Help and support - users can quickly and easily find the answers they need, reducing
help desk calls and increasing user satisfaction.
Enhanced recovery tools - System Restore enables users and administrators to restore a
computer to a previous working state without losing data.
Reducing the cost of managing an IT infrastructure
New management tools let network administrators streamline operations to increase efficiency
and productivity throughout an organization. The resulting desktops are easier to use, more
responsive to change, and better adapted to the way users need to work. It also lets employees
increase productivity with less technical support.
Windows XP Professional helps organizations to reduce the cost of doing business in several key
ways:
Centralized administration – Group Policy and IntelliMirror technologies allow system
administrators to automatically configure each user's computer so that they can log on to
any company desktop, anywhere in the world, and work with their personal settings and
information.
Better planning – RSoP allows administrators to see the effect of Group Policy on a
targeted group of users or computers before making changes.
Enhanced deployment tools - reduces the time it takes to roll-out a typical desktop
system and making it easier, more efficient, and less expensive to conduct large scale
deployments.
Remote assistance - reduces the amount of time system administrators spend at users'
desks. Many administrative and troubleshooting tasks can now be done from the
administrators' own desks.
Enhanced application compatibility - users or IT administrators can specify if an
application needs to run in either Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 95/98 or Windows Me
compatibility mode. In this mode, Windows XP Professional system DLLs provide
appropriate responses to the running application, allowing it to execute appropriately
without a noticeable loss of performance.
User state migration - helps administrators to migrate a user’s data and
application/operating system settings from an old computer to a new Windows XP
Professional desktop computer.
Streamlining Business Processes
To be competitive companies need to adapt both internal and external business processes
quickly. For example, businesses need to create a rapid flow of up-to-date information among
employees, customers, and partners. This can help a company spot trends and act on them
quickly. And a business with efficient business processes can form closer, more efficient
relationships with customers and partners.
Windows XP Professional helps organizations to streamline business processes in several key
ways:
Reliable systems - today's businesses must be open around the clock and around the
world, while still protecting private corporate information. Critical business processes
such as online inventory fulfillment or order processing require a reliable, fast and secure
operating system.
Scalable performance - desktop users benefit from large memory and dual-processor
support, which allows them to perform such demanding tasks as engineering, design,
and mathematical operations.
Centralized administration - Windows XP provides powerful management tools to help
ensure business policies and processes are implemented consistently and efficiently.
Build better solutions, faster – support for leading-edge Internet standards such as XML
lets developers quickly and cost-effectively create, refine, and deploy applications.
Communicating with customers and business partners
All companies face the challenge of simplifying communication with their customers, partners and
suppliers. In addition, there is the added challenge of getting their own internal systems and
employees to talk to each other.
Windows XP Professional helps organizations to communicate and collaborate with customers,
suppliers and business partners in several key ways:
Integrate customers and suppliers into your value chain - if you develop or acquire new
software, or even acquire entire new companies through a merger, the open standards
supported by Windows XP let you integrate new systems with your existing processes.
Likewise, you can more easily and securely integrate third parties into your business and
to let them access core systems on a "need-to-know" basis.
Secure information and communications - the end-to-end security of Windows XP lets
organizations integrate systems both inside and outside the company, with fewer
concerns about security across the network.
Real-time communications – with Windows Messenger you can choose text, voice, or
video and experience the best online voice and video quality. Collaborate with contacts,
transfer files, and share applications and whiteboard drawings.
Already, major corporations using preview versions of Windows XP Professional – including
British Columbia Ministry of Sustainable Resources, JR East Information Systems, and Oklahoma
Supreme Court say Windows XP Professional will add value, solve key business problems and
play an important role in the future of their businesses.