Network News Volume 34 No.3
Welcome to this first on-line edition of the Service Industry Association newsletter. Please let us know what you think of the contents by sending an e-mail to the editor.
ISNI Copyright Bill passes House
by: Claudia J. Betzner
H.R. 2281 with H.R. 72 attached (ISNI’s bill called Computer Maintenance Competition Assurance Act of 1997) passed the U. S. House on August 4. The bill will amend title 17, Section 117, U. S. Code, to allow the making of a copy of a computer program if such copy is made solely by virtue of the activation of the machine in order to maintain the equipment.
A call to arms for all service providers to contact
Orin Hatch’s office by letter or call to encourage passage of
this bill. Senator Hatch of Utah is the Chairman of the Judiciary
Committee on the Senate side where this bill now sits. A blitz of
the Committee members in Washington is now being planned for the fall.
If you can be a part of this activity please contact the Executive
Director. Any communication should include both bill numbers with
the name of H.R. 72 "Computer Maintenance Competition Assurance
Act of 1997," and specify what this bill is intended to accomplish.
Contents
ISNI Member Capability Database
I am happy to report to you the database in now complete and is
a major benefit of membership. Rich Heimann is to be commended
for his many hours of volunteer service to this project and the dedication
of seeing it to completion. The database has been designed in ACT,
which our research tells us is used by the largest number of business
professionals. The database has many benefits and hundreds of fields
of information such as size, products serviced, areas of specialization,
demographics, type services, professional skill’s & certifications
and many more fields not mentioned. This database gives you automatic
direct mailing capability, mass emails, research data and the information
can be manipulated however you wish. It can be accessed directly from
the ISNI website with a password which is available to all members
in good standing. Simply click on Member Database, you will then be
asked for user name and password," bingo you can then download
the entire database to your ACT software for the most current up to
date member information. Non-members can go to the website and initiate
two types of service searches - (1) Service desired; Computer,
Copier or Medical; (2) Location of Service desired. They will
then see the company names, contact and telephone number of all member
companies in good standing in that location. This referral service
will be a major benefit of membership since it will bring you "new"
business. Corporate Sponsors and Preferred Parts Companies will be
hotlinked directly from the website. We ask that if you have a website
that you hotlink directly to ISNI as a Company Member of "The
Network."
Contents
What's in a Name
The Identity Committee in conjunction with the Board of Directors
is in the final stages of renaming the association to better reflect
our new focus of promoting an open environment of systems, service
and support. An open maintenance and support environment exists when
the manufacturers of those products and systems provide timely and
economical access to all things needed for others to maintain and
support those products including parts, diagnostics and training.
Some of the names under consideration include: Open Service Network,
Service Provider’s Network and Service Industry Association.
Service Provider’s Association was the first to be voted on by
the Board but further research showed the initials SPA was already
used by a sister association called Software Publishers Association.
The Board hopes to announce the new name late in September after the
Board meeting September 24 & 25 in Atlanta.
Contents
Data Connectivity Committee
This committee has the responsibility of defining standards including
call records, protocols for dispatch, tech support, help desk, and
logistics and is discussing a formal alliance with the Customer
Support Consortium(CSC) to jointly develop these standards. CSC
has an existing committee and is engaged in a program to define
open exchange standards that will facilitate the sharing of support
information between cooperating parties, both within an organization
and across organizational boundaries. ISNI and CSC share the vision
of providing support knowledge among diverse tools and locations.
Whatever directions our discussions take, the results and a report
will be presented at the ISNI annual conference in March. CSC is a
group of 70 leading technology companies who work together to significantly
improve customer support by developing strategies, standards, and
programs which compliments ISNI’s goal of promoting Open
Service and providing Customers with Choices.
Contents
Customer Choices focus for 1999 Conference
The annual ISNI Conference scheduled for March 14, 15, & 16, 1999 in Newport Beach, California will focus on Customer Choices. The three day event will begin with a Golf Tournament at Pelican Hill in Newport Beach at noon on Sunday followed by a Welcome Reception at 6:30 P.M. ISNI’s intent is to make Customers and End Users a major part of the Conference with Customer Panels, End User Focus Groups, Customer Satisfaction Surveys and Customers invited to attend. The General Session will begin at 8:00 A.M. on the 15th with an address by the President followed with a Customer Panel and the unveiling of ISNI’s "White Paper." The Customers will provide feedback on the white paper and give the audience insight into what Choices they would like to see in the future. The "Top Dogs" Industry Strategy Panel will round out the morning agenda.
Both afternoons will be dedicated to Breakouts, Round tables and
Deep Impact Sessions. On Tuesday morning reports will be presented
from the Best Practices Study and the Data Connectivity Committee.
The final major event for the second day will be a Legal
Debate: Gladiators vs. Customer Choice Defenders. This is planned
to be a heated event aimed at showing both sides of major issues affecting
the service industry today. Tuesday night’s "Grand Finale"
will be held in Newport Harbor aboard a yacht.
Contents
Name your choice for 2000
Where would you like the year 2000 conference to be held? Under consideration
are Las Vegas, South Florida or Northern California. Please cast your
vote by E-mail to cbetzner@aol.com.
Please include what you would like the focus to be, your preference
of March, April or May and what topics are important to you.
Contents
Legal Update
U S Justice vs. G E Medical
The big news for medical service providers in the last few weeks
has been the G E Medical settlement with the U. S. Justice Department
in order to clear the way for their purchase of Innoserv Technologies.
In order to complete the clearance, G E Medical Systems agreed to
settle it’s civil lawsuit filed in Montana by the Antitrust Division
of the Department of Justice. The lawsuit was filed in 1996 and challenged
a G E Medical practice under which health care providers who were
also in the third party service business were not eligible to license
GE ‘s proprietary advanced service materials. Under the revised
policy, third party service providers will be eligible to license
G E Medical Systems advanced service materials for use by their own
employees to service their own G E Medical Imaging equipment without
regard to the scope of their activities. The question is "Does
this settlement go far enough since it does not permit competitors
of GE to use GE’s advanced diagnostics which are needed to provide
service?" The Medical Group within ISNI is requested to provide
feedback on this important issue.
Contents
The Thomas Group Joins list of Sponsors
The Thomas Group is a consulting firm specializing
in providing professional business management assistance to manufacturers,
distributors, and service organizations. Co-founded by Paul Thomas
Hunt and Dale Hunt, the company’s focus is to assist its clients
in developing effective strategies for addressing complex operational
and technical issues. Services offered include, but are not limited
to: Applied strategic and operations planning, solutions management,
market research and analysis, training and development (including
team building and conflict management), and strategic partnering.
The Thomas Group’s focus is to deliver measurable results that
will create value for the client organization.
Contents
Corporate Sponsors
| Alpha Microsystems
Services Operation Douglas J. Tullio, President and CEO Randy Parks, Vice President 714 957-8500 |
Beckman Coulter Bruce Breeden, Srv Mktg Mgr Vic Hasbrouck, Manager 714 773-6675 |
COHR Sandy Morford, C.O.O Malcolm Ridgway, V. P. 818 734-8376 |
| Comdisco Healthcare
Group Dave Johnson, Dir Tech Resrs 847 518-5411 |
DecisionOne Corporation Ken Draeger, Chairman Steve Felice President & CEO 610 725-2500 |
Healthtech Publications Jack Spears, Publisher 401 434-1050 |
| InnoServ Technologies,
Inc. Tom Owings, Exec. V.P. 817 468-3377 |
Maintech Frank D’Alessio, C.O.O. Carole Greene, V.P. Marketing & Sales 973 614-1700 |
Northrop Grumman Joe Mulderig, Pres. GSS Div 516 563-6907 |
| Telos Systems Solutions Mark Hester, C.O.O. & Corp Vice President, Telos Corp 801 298 8000 |
The Thomas Group
Ltd. Paul Thomas Hunt, Partner Dale Hunt, Partner 714 279-1000 |
Board Action
- Bylaws committee formed
- Final draft of FDA - ANPR approved - submitted in June to FDA - ISNI Board members and FDA scheduled for meeting September 18
- Board approves renaming ISNI with final (3) choices - final decision 9/24
- Board approves Platinum Sponsor program
- Board approves the development of its "White Paper"
- Board names Conference Committee - Claudia Betzner, Steve Davies,
Malcolm Ridgway
Contents
The President
Greetings from the President
At our Board Meeting following our annual conference in Orlando earlier this year, we set some very ambitious goals to take the Association to new heights. Just as in our everyday business life, it’s often easier to set goals than it is to accomplish them. When the participants are volunteers from the Board, it’s even more difficult to see results, given the demands of our day jobs. And it’s gratifying when you do see them. So I’m pleased to say that there are surprising results with regard to some of these goals. We formed a Data Connectivity committee to identify and promulgate cross industry standards for call centers, logistics operations and other service industry activities, so that multi-vendor support might become easier for everybody. As the committee chairman, Al Andrus discovered another organization called Customer Support Consortium or CSC that has been very active with similar objectives. This group is a not for profit association of the big guys, all of whom have, guess what – Multivendor Support issues across the industry. I had the pleasure of attending a meeting in Denver in early August on the subject of setting Logistics standards. CSC is not in the business of implementing standards, but rather defining them. It seems that ISNI and CSC would be natural partners (see Claudia’s article in this issue) to meet the goals of our respective organization sooner than later. At any rate, we don’t want to reinvent the wheel. The point is that incredible progress has been made in this committee and all of you should get to know what the CSC is all about. You will meet Greg Oxton, the Executive Director at the Atlanta Board Meeting where he will go into much more detail on the subject.
Then there’s the Identity Committee under the
direction of Steve Davies. We are lucky to have Steve back as an active
participant on the board. He prepared a very thoughtful paper on the
subject of a name change for ISNI that was reviewed at the San Francisco
Board meeting. I’m sure all the Board Members would agree that
a name change is not easy, and surely there are enough e-mails between
all of us to prove that it has high interest among the board members.
(Don’t loose faith Steve) While we had hoped to be able to come
to a decision by mid-August in order to get a head start on new publicity,
there just wasn’t the consensus that we needed. I believe there
is a commitment to make this important decision at the Atlanta Board
Meeting. You can be sure that Claudia will be making a final announcement
soon after. Again, some very useful volunteer hours by Steve made
the difference in this committee activity. Finally, Claudia is announcing
in this issue that the Member Capability Database is complete, and
that if you have paid your dues, and if you have the ACT software,
you can download the file from the ISNI web site. I’ve done this
and it’s wonderful. I will pat David Kingsland, our webmaster,
Claudia and myself on the back for this achievement that shows how
great technology can be. All we need now is something called parts.com
to enable us to buy any part from any manufacturer from the web. Claudia
plans to update the database on a quarterly basis so that is continues
to be current. That’s 3 out of 5 where outstanding progress has
been made, and for which we can see a completion date in the future.
Hopefully the other 2 will soon be started. Happy Networking.
Contents
