Our Application Support Team (AST) has been working hard the first part of this year to improve its performance and responsiveness.  Despite our efforts, the volume of work and work-related processes continue to create a backlog in the system.  To improve our responsiveness and service for our Associates, the following changes have been put in place.

• Daily stand up meetings.  Nicki and Fabian meet daily to discuss AST’s workload.  This allows us to get a better sense of our backlog of work (outstanding tickets), the projected workload for the coming day and anticipated changes/events that could drive the upcoming day’s workload.
• Resource allocation.  One of the biggest changes was the daily allocation of resources.  With the daily meetings in place, resources were assigned based on ticket type and this change allowed the team to effectively attack the work and resolve incidents.
• Added resources.  Temporary resources were added to help with the volume of tickets.  We are currently looking to fill a full-time position to avoid future backlog. 

We are seeing improvements in our overall numbers. The month of May closed with our average time to resolve a request at 4:30 (Hours: Minutes) and our backlog (open tickets) down to 75 tickets. Our backlog total for June so far is 51 tickets.

 
Your patience and continued support is appreciated.  We are always looking for better ways to provide support to our Essex teammates. If your recent experiences with the Application Support Team do not match our recent performance statistics, or you have any feedback or suggestions, please send them to it-feedback@essex.com.