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TOPdesk Magazine 2011 Issue 1
TOPdesk Magazine 2011 Issue 1
Editorial Editorial
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Help!
Recent critique has done anything but promote service desks. Posts on Twitter and similar blogs over long waiting times, dodgy telephone subscriptions and unhelpful help desk employees have provoked a flood of similar reactions from other users. This resulted in a one-off magazine, Help! - all about service desk nightmares, which was released under close scrutiny from many service desks. At TOPdesk we found the magazine a bit much. But when it goes as far as an official publication, its high time to present some return fire. Not because nothing ever goes wrong, but because there are plenty of service desks who do do their job well. In 2011, TOPdesk magazine will feature some of the most successful of these service desks. The series kicks off with three companies where the service desk receives far more compliments than complaints: Prenatal, EuroNed and KreuzeTelecom. Also in this edition, we further explore the successful application of ITIL v3 and mergers within councils. We will also take a look at the Planning department at TOPdesk and at organizations that implement TOPdesk for quality management to keep their service levels as high as possible. After all, you never know when youre going to get an angry customer on the line. Pleasant reading! Niek Steenhuis
The TOPdesk Magazine covers subjects that are topical in the world of professional service desks in IT, facilities and other service providing organizations. TOPdesk Magazine is intended for managers, service desk employees, facilities organizations and electronic city councils anyone who is involved with supporting clients on a daily basis. This concerns both the processes and the technology behind these services.
EDITORIAL
TOPdesk Magazine is a TOPdesk publication Tel: +31 (0)15 270 09 00 Email: editorial@topdesk.com Chief Editor Niek Steenhuis Editors Nienke Deuss, Claudia Funk, Timme Hos Translators Nicola van de Velde, Hazel Hollis Contributors Kirsten Crown, Roelof Davids, Sander Jerphanion, Elsbeth Hamberg, Patrick Mackaaij, Annemarie Moeijes Graphics Elise Kerner, Joost Knuit Layout Elise Kerner, Dutch Designers Collective Photography Ted Erkkila, Olwen Harkema, Aad Hoogendoorn, Yokogawa Website David Blom, Eelke van den Bos en Ted Erkkila
Contents March 11
4 6 12 17 18 22 24 24 32
Column:
But we have a web portal, right?
The next step in quality management
Department in focus:
Planning and Change Management
Smart thinking:
14 tips for the safe and secure use of TOPdesk
Tips + Tricks
News
The partnership with Duna Elektronika was closed late last year
attend keynote sessions, seminars, and chat with industry experts. This year, TOPdesk will be at stand 310, so please drop by and say hello!
4 NEWS
This year TOPdesks Christmas cards were made by the soSuba Foundation
Earls Court, London Demo Days, London TOPdesk office, London Bridge The Facilities Show NEC, Birmingham
THE NETHERLANDS
Government & IT
19 - 21 April
Jaarbeurs, Utrecht
BELGIUM
V-ICT-OR Shopt IT
12 May
Metropolis, Antwerp
NEWS 5
On the line
After suffering from some recent bad publicity, the time has come for service desks to go on a charm offensive. We spoke with three successful service desks that regularly receive positive feedback from their clients and we asked ourselves: Whats the secret of their success?
Service centres and help desks across Europe have been discredited for quite some time now. Why? Because help desks are beating each other at how customer unfriendly they can be. Complaints range from being too bureaucratic or the time it takes to respond to questions, to the lack of incentive or willingness to help the customer. Instead of focusing on the negative, however, we thought it was time to look at positive examples of help desks. Some people think that it takes a lot of effort to resolve something through a help desk; nevertheless there are enough organizations that know how to handle these situations well. They put the customer first and have continuous help desk employees ready to be of service. In the first part of this series of articles we will focus on three service desks from various sectors that all have on thing in common: happy customers. We were curious about what good service desks do differently from the much criticized service desks. How do they provide a good service? And what is their formula for success?
6 ON THE LINE
a distance, which enables the employees to tackle a problem immediately. We can easily resolve malfunctions by calling the switchboard, says Jacobs. This is quicker, more efficient and cheaper for the customer.
Taking responsibility
Kreuze Telecom does not receive many complaints and the feedback is usually positive. We are often told that we are professional and that we manage to reassure our customers that we can help them, tells Jacobs. In addition to professionally handling problems on a technical level, Jacobs illustrates an even more important issue. You should never tell a customer
that something is not your problem. Our aim is for them to only have one point of contact in the area of telecommunication: us. And even if the cause of a malfunction falls in a grey area, you should never put the ball back in the customers court.
ORGANIZATION: Kreuze Telecom TECHNICAL SERVICE DESK: offers companies within the chemical industry first and second line support with mobile and fixed line solutions
KLANTEN 7
Helpdesk experts
The health care industry is always in flux and so EuroNed must anticipate continuous changes. A good service relies heavily on expert knowledge concerning everything that goes on in the health care industry. This does not only include IT issues; a help desk employee should also have substantive knowledge on current
THINK WITH THE CUSTOMER, AND TRY LOOKING BEYOND THE OBVIOUS
Natasja Lamers, EuroNed
8 ON THE LINE
ORGANIZATION: EuroNed SERVICE DESK: offers technical support and answers legal questions for pharmacies, general practitioners and health care institutions
KLANTEN 9
YOU SHOULD KNOW HOW THE ENTIRE PRODUCTION AND SALES PROCESS WORKS
Wil Brouwer, Prnatal
request for Prnatal in the Netherlands. With 33,000 to 35,000 contact moments each year, the Customer Care department offers service in the broadest sense. We do not only speak to customers on the telephone, explains Brouwer, but we also support all our stores and our webshop. In addition, we function as an overflow for the switchboard when all the lines are busy.
10 ON THE LINE
ORGANIZATION: Prnatal Mother & Child.BV CUSTOMER CARE: answers calls from Dutch customers of Prnatal, supports the webshop, answers questions from staff and takes on the tasks from the telephone centre
KLANTEN 11
Trends
TEXT: SANDER JERPHANION
SANDER JERPHANION
is head of the Consultancy department in the Netherlands. He manages a team of more than 60 consultants.
A lot has happened over the last few years when it comes to theory about processes in general and within ITIL in particular. A new version of ITIL (v3) has been launched, and the version 2 exams have since been scrapped. A quick scan through business literature might give you the impression that ITIL v3 is most suited to a small group of large businesses. You could be forgiven for thinking that, considering the complexity and number of processes in the new version. However, there is a lot to be gained from ITIL v3 for many companies, even if there are certain ifs and buts. In this article, we will delve deeper into ITIL v3 and share the experience of our 80 service management consultants on the subject.
What is ITIL?
To be able to explain how ITIL can be applied successfully, it is important to define what ITIL actually is. The abbreviation ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library and is the name of a set of books geared towards companies within the service sector, in which a theoretical framework for implementing processes is described. True, ITIL was born from the IT world, but it can also apply to other business sectors. This is particularly true for areas of business with an increasingly process-oriented mentality, such as Facilities Management.
12 TRENDS
processes and functions. Additionally, five phases have been introduced, which together form the Service Life Cycle Model (see figure 1). When we at TOPdesk first heard of this great number of processes, functions and phases, we were immediately reminded of advertising for razors. Every few years a new razor comes onto the market, each time with an extra blade, and each time promising an even better shaving experience. The newest razors now have at least five blades. But arent five blades a bit over the top? Do those extra blades really have added value? The same question comes to mind when thinking of the large number of processes described in ITIL. What is the added value of all those extra processes? At this time, it is much more important than ever that companies dare to choose. Which parts of ITIL do you use, which do you not use, and, more importantly, in which order do you use them?
TRENDS 13
Dare to choose
With almost 40 processes, functions and phases, it is more important than ever to work through the right points in the right order. To help you, we have divided the processes into five levels (see figure 2). This diagram illustrates a simple rule of thumb: there is no point in implementing a process from a higher level if processes in the level underneath are still not in order. In that case the underlying levels should get attention first. figure 2
14 TRENDS
priority list (see figure 2). This is not because it is not important to have a service catalogue, but because the necessity to organize the development of this item as a (mature) ITIL process earns attention later than many other processes. In other words, setting up a service catalogue is very useful for many companies, but implementing the ITIL process (with process-oriented improvements etc.) is somewhat unnecessary for a significant proportion of organizations. When the first focus area has been established, you can use the scheme below to see which functionalities in the TOPdesk software have been designed for this purpose. For more information see: www.topdesk.com/en/services/consultancy
TOPdesk
Useful information for this process is found throughout TOPdesk Financial details can be kept track of in several places in TOPdesk Project Management & Service Level Agreements Available throughout TOPdesk Reports, Selections, KPIs and Performance Dashboard
TRENDS 15
Service Design
Process & Functions
Availability Management Capacity Management Information Security Management IT Service Continuity Management Service Catalogue Management Service Level Management Supplier Management
TOPdesk
Link with System Management Tools and Configuration Management Link with System Management Tools and Configuration Management Useful information for this process is found throughout TOPdesk Useful information for this process is found throughout TOPdesk Contract Management and SLM (Service Card), Change Management (requesting and publishing standard changes via the Self Service Desk) Contract Management and SLM & Reports wizard Supplier Management & Service Level Agreements
Service Transition
Process & Functions
Change Management Knowledge Management Release and Deployment Management Change Management Knowledge Base, Standard solutions and Problem Management Change Management (Version card, template to support DTAP), Configuration Management (releases, patches) Configuration Management, Supporting Files, Contract Management and SLM, Stock and Order Management, Property Management Change Management & Project Management Change Management Change Management
TOPdesk
Service Asset and Configuration Management Service Validation and Testing Transition Planning and Support Evaluation
Service Operation
Process & Functions
Access Management Event Management Incident Management Problem Management Request Fulfillment Management Application Management IT Operations Management Service Desk Technical Management
TOPdesk
Self Service Desk (identifying persons) & Access Management Event Management & links with System management tools (based on XML or HTTP requests) Incident Management Problem Management Incident Management & Change Management (simple changes), Self Service Desk Configuration Managment (Software Card) Operations Management Self Service Desk, Incident Management and Caller Card Knowledge Base, Operations Management & Configuration Management
16 TRENDS
Column
TEXT: ANNEMARIE MOEIJES
During a recent implementation of TOPdesk, I found myself in an intense discussion about master data; the staff data entered in TOPdesk to keep track of who your customers are. At this organization, a telephone directory was available on the intranet. So far, so good, I hear you thinking. But if an employee changed position, or took his papers and family photos and relocated to a new desk, he had to fill in a web form in order for someone else to adjust the details in the telephone directory. And what happened then? The department responsible for updating the telephone directory saw it as supplementary. Updating the list had no priority and requests remained untouched. The frustrated employee, who could only be reached after a long hunt from the reception every time there was a visitor, submitted another request for change. And another one. And another. Those responsible for the directory soon had an inbox full of double requests, and even less desire to carry the changes out. As a result, duplicate administration began to appear, which was wellmeant, but not beneficial for the service. Is Peters room number now the one in the telephone directory, or in the Excel sheet at reception? Or is it perhaps the one in our property management program? With the increasing digitalization of society, online forms are often offered to customers; to place orders, adjust details, or to register something. But an online form is only an online form; you eventually have to process the information entered. I see this happen in my private life too. I had taken good care to tell the council about my oversized rubbish via their website. My rubbish, however, to the distaste of my neighbours, sat on the doorstep for three days. I have registered my meter readings online twice since moving house, and I still get an angry letter asking me to fill in the details. At first sight, offering a digital portal to your customers can seem like a brilliant idea. There are, however, two crucially important factors in doing this successfully, and exactly these factors often get far too little attention. Firstly, it is important that your customers understand the digital interface. No endless forwards-and-then-
ANNEMARIE MOEIJES
is a consultant at TOPdesk and has years of experience with implementations and changes within diverse organizations.
ROELOF DAVIDS
is a consultant at TOPdesk. He is seeing more and more customers who implement TOPdesk for Quality Management.
TOPdesk is regularly used in quality control departments or by quality controllers to replace workflow-oriented Excel sheets or other simple databases, as such solutions are often not ideal if you wish to create reports before or after routing activities. This article will explain how two customers use TOPdesk to monitor quality.
Quality Management
Quality can be defined in many ways. The frequently used ISO standard, geared towards quality management, defines quality as the extent to which a number of inherent characteristics [of a product, service] fulfill certain criteria. By this definition, quality is a relative concept in relation to a set of specific requirements and quality management incorporates all activities that are geared towards raising the level of quality. The Deming-circle: Plan, Do, Check and Act (PDCA) is one example of this. There are a variety of principles and standards according to which you can work, such as the already mentioned ISO standard, HKZ, NEN, SOX, and ITIL. A key component in the organization of quality improvement is to ensure that the organization learns from complaints and other problems. This can be done through accurate registration, analysis
and, where necessary, organization or initiation of improvement projects or activities. This includes corrective and preventive measures. Quality control departments and quality controllers may also deal with other company-related incidents and audit results. Two organizations that use TOPdesk for quality management are the William Schrikker Group (WSG) and Yokogawa Europe B.V.
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The WSG consists of five results-driven units (RDU). De Graaff is responsible for a number of things including monitoring the improvements that are made as a result of complaints, suggestions from employees, audit results and evaluations. At WSG there is no separate quality control department, but quality improvement is practiced in all levels of the organization. Until now, each RDU kept Excel lists listing the ongoing improvements, explains de Graaff. I had very little insight into the status, duration and activities that were part of improvements and it was difficult to follow the progress of long-term improvements. The lists provided a poor overview and did not properly inform the MT about what still needed to happen. The Excel lists were managed by one person per RDU, and I would receive a summary every now and then. There was an enormous backlog in maintaining the lists and, as a result, I often had to wait for lists to be updated. In the Change Management module, a standard template has been made for improvements. Every improvement has a number of steps that are always carried out, just as in the PDCA circle. When implementing an improvement, the individual responsible selects the template and assigns the relevant operators to the various activities. In this way, its always clear who is doing what. Additionally, you can also run a report on the number of improvements per RDU and the source of these improvements an audit or a suggestion from an employee for example. Complaints come in through TOPdesk as incidents and, if they require a more formal process, a template for this can also be selected in Change Management. In this way you will always have an overview of which complaints are being processed and what has or has not already been taken care of. The complaint report is compiled digitally in TOPdesk. Those responsible go through any outstanding improvements and process them in TOPdesk, explains de Graaff, while new improvements are created in TOPdesk directly. During an internal audit at the youth probation unit, for example, it became apparent that the procedures that should be followed when the
safety of the youth was threatened were not clearly defined. In TOPdesk we were able to register the source of the ambiguity, as well as why a procedure should be introduced and who is responsible for seeing to it. As a result I have a good overview of any outstanding activities and can get my reports in order faster. I can see which RDUs see to improvements quickly, as well as when certain activities are unnecessarily left waiting to be done. I can also see whether the problem has actually been solved, because we first have to enter a goal, and later confirm whether it has been achieved. So does the new procedure really offer the clarity that the employees want? Tough problems also come to the forefront, because they remain open for a longer period of time, or reoccur. An added advantage is that TOPdesk facilitates communication between RDUs about improvements. For example, when the youth protection MT decides that something should be changed as a result of a suggestion, the IT department is issued with an activity through the system, and youth protection can monitor whether it has been carried out according to expectations.
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We are a growing, worldwide organization, and we want to better support the improvement process, explains Jeroen. At the moment we work with Excel lists and various databases; there is no central registration. For Europe and Africa, we are going to begin processing all improvements in TOPdesk. For this we will use the Change Management module, within which we can assign different operators to the various activities within each improvement. An ongoing area of improvement, for example, is ensuring that all our electrical equipment conforms to the NEN3140, a standard for working safely with electricity. Nowadays, issues are normally resolved, but because there is not enough insight into what has happened, you can not always be certain that the problem will not reoccur. Careful and central registration in TOPdesk allows improvements to penetrate all levels of the organization, and therefore ensures that we all benefit as much as possible from improvements that have been made. We also want to go further with our reports: which factors are impeding improvements? We keep track of, for instance, whether an improvement can be traced back to a specific process or production line.
WE ANTICIPATE THAT WE WILL EARN BACK MUCH MORE THAN OUR INVESTMENT
Jeroen Buurman, Yokogawa Europe B.V.
Even just the fact that we are now working so intensively on this has brought a lot of attention and, more importantly, support from the management. The commitment from employees to improve the quality of our processes and products is also considerable. It will take time and training to implement TOPdesk throughout the whole company, but we anticipate that we will earn back much more than our investment.
i
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Merging Councils?
Decide early to collaborate in one tool
Voluntary or forced, many district councils are beginning to work together intensively or even merge, which can be a long and challenging process. A service management tool like TOPdesk can support the work of local authorities before, during and after a fusion.
TEXT: TIMME HOS
Many local authorities are, or will soon be part of a fusion or collaboration project. Last October, for example, three London councils announced plans to share services to avoid cuts to frontline services, and maximize buying power in the IT marketplace. An effort to work together by two or more councils is often voluntary, but sometimes fusions are forced. As a result, not everyone involved has the same positive experience of collaboration. It costs councils a lot of time and energy to bring multiple processes and organizational cultures into harmony with each other. Therefore it is important to keep an overview of which person from which organization and which department is responsible for what. A lack of transparency is not uncommon.
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Department in focus
TEXT: ELSBETH HAMBERG
ELSBETH HAMBERG
has been working in the Planning department since 2007. For the past year, she has been using TOPdesk to support the planning departments workload.
24 DEPARTMENT IN FOCUS
result of scheduling activities, so it was already completed prior to the start of the consultancy process. Recently, however, we have added an activity to keep track of the progress of the activities the so-called follow-up activity the end date of which is the final date of the consultancy process. This ensures that the change remains open until all parts of the tender have been carried out, enabling us to keep an overview of exactly what has been done.
department, we have been the biggest beta-tester of the new version, which has been a very interesting and educational process. The new Change Management module offers many advantages. Because there are now activity templates, which can be linked to several change templates at once and are also optional, we do not have to maintain as many change templates. And you can already specify an operator for each activity when carrying through a change request based on a template. Both the checklists and the completion status have made the overviews clearer, and we can easily adjust the end date of the activities as soon as we know when they need to be completed by.
In change management, both the process itself, and the follow up are kept in check
DEPARTMENT IN FOCUS 25
The planning department has started using Change Management to replace paper checklists
For Example
How does this work in practice? A new customer signs an order confirmation for the purchase of TOPdesk and sends it back to us. Reception processes the agreement and a request for change is created. This ends up at planning, together with the hardcopy of the order confirmation. On the basis of what is stated in the tender, the change request is escalated to an extensive change in process using a template. Using this template, the change is assigned five activities: Customer contact: here, we contact the customer to schedule the implementation. Administration: we process everything that is discussed with the customer, and confirm the details with both the customer and the consultant. It is always clear when the activities can begin. Licences: We create licences and prepare a package containing manuals, which the consultant can take to the customer; Billing: We write up everything we have used for billing purposes. Follow-up: At the end of the process, we check to see whether everything has been done. With larger projects, we email the CRM department department, informing them that the process is complete and that they can send an evaluation to the customer, if desired.
Better Collaboration
Since the new Change Management was introduced, we have been working more intensively with other departments, such as Bespoke Work. When a request for bespoke work comes in, we now use just one change, with various activities for the various departments, so that we can clearly see the status of everything. The
Bespoke Work department can see if the order confirmation has come in by checking the status we have put in the request for change; and we, in turn, can see when the bespoke work has been completed by whether the activity has been closed and whether Planning has given the go ahead for the billing activity to take place.
26 DEPARTMENT IN FOCUS
++ All information in
The Advantages:
one place, thus more transparent. Also useful for different departments, such as Sales and Support. your own application, that way you know what youre talking about and can give Development feedback. smaller archive.
++ Better overview of the
Expansion
We have now been working with TOPdesk for almost three years and we are becoming ever more enthusiastic about it. We are not only expanding our working methods with Change Management, but are also working with more and more of the available modules. We have recently implemented
Visitor Registration and Incident Management, and set up a mail import. And who knows what the future will bring, maybe even a Planning module?
DEPARTMENT IN FOCUS 27
Work smarter 14 TIPS FOR THE SAFE AND SECURE USE OF TOPDESK
TEXT: PATRICK MACKAAIJ
PATRICK MACKAAIJ
is a consultant and team manager at TOPdesk. He specializes in technical issues and optimalizing processes.
To be able to work regardless of time and location, individuals often have access to information systems away from their workplace, usually via the internet. They often use the same login details for all these websites and applications, which can lead to unsecured situations. In this article, youll learn about how you can secure your information with passwords and the TOPdesk login mechanism, and protect confidential data with helpful settings.
28 WORK SMARTER
TOPdesk authentication: Use the same login name for the network and for TOPdesk.
When using TOPdesk authentication, TOPdesk encrypts the passwords for the Self Service Desk and the operator section before saving them in the database on the Person or User card respectively. But the login names of colleagues will usually have already been administered on the network. For this reason, its useful to make the login name on the TOPdesk Person or User card the same as the login name on the network and the domain or server name of the network. When logging in, TOPdesk verifies the combination of the login name and password with the network, so that you will always need to login to TOPdesk with the newest password.
In order to delay someone who is trying to guess a password, from version 4.3, TOPdesk blocks a login name for 5 minutes after 100 login attempts (intruder-lockout).
WORK SMARTER 29
Creating multiple login names in one go? Use the login generator.
Many of our customers import the TOPdesk login name, together with remaining personal details, directly from Microsoft Active Directory, or Novell eDirectory. However, they also have the option to set the login name manually on the Person card. TOPdesk even offers a useful Login generator to generate login names for multiple Persons cards and, for the purpose of TOPdesk authentication, you can also generate passwords this way. You can find the login generator via the overview page: Supporting files > Total overview Persons.
30 WORK SMARTER
tips + tricks
Display URL on Extra Tab
From TOPdesk 4.3, you can publish an HTTP Request that has been created in the Action Explorer as an extra tab on the corresponding card. TOPdesks Support department often receives tips from customers concerning useful applications, which we will now share with you: Relevant Knowledge Items on Incident Cards To encourage service desk employees to use the TOPdesk knowledge base more often, a customer has created an HTTP Request that can be displayed directly on an extra Relevant Knowledge Items tab. This HTTP Request looks at the category and Object ID of the incident and searches for corresponding items in the Knowledge Base. In this way, the service desk can consult the Knowledge Base quickly before saving an incident, and that saves time. Suppliers Location via Google Maps Another customer has created an HTTP Request that uses Google Maps to display the location of a supplier on an extra tab of the Supplier card. Process Descriptions One of the Account Managers at TOPdesk has published process descriptions on extra tabs in his demonstration environment. In this case, they are ISM process descriptions, published on Mavim. By using this, service desk employees can easily search for procedures. If you would like to know how to install these HTTP requests, please contact our Support department.
Scheduling Reports
In TOPdesk Enterprise, from version 4.3, you can schedule reports. You can use this to save copies of a PDF or Excel file at regular intervals, so that you can look at the report when it suits you. You can also email the saved file to operators, operator groups or Self Service Desk users. How does it work? You can schedule a report from within the report itself. Once you have executed and saved a report, you will find the option Schedule at the bottom of the screen. You use this to create a new card and schedule the report. Please note that you must first be authorized to schedule reports. Scheduled report On the Scheduled Report card you then enter a few details of the report. For example, you can determine whether you would like to display the report in PDF or Excel format, when the file should be created, and whether you would like to save the file or send it by email. You can then find the saved or sent reports on subsequent tabs. Overview of scheduled reports Via the menu option Reports > Scheduled Reports you can see an overview of all scheduled reports.
TOPdesk UK limited t +44 (0)20 7803 4200 e info@topdesk.co.uk w www.topdesk.co.uk TOPdesk Germany GmbH t +49 (0)631 624 00 0 e info@topdesk.de w www.topdesk.de
TOPdesk Belgium t +32 (0)3 292 32 90 e info@topdesk.be w www.topdesk.be TOPdesk Netherlands t +31 (0)15 270 09 00 e info@topdesk.nl w www.topdesk.nl
TOPdesk France t +33 1 4222 2314 e info.topdesk.fr w www.topdesk.fr TOPdesk Hungary t +36 1 301 0190 e info@topdesk.hu w www.topdesk.hu
Copyright 2011 TOPdesk UK limited. Although this magazine has been produced with the utmost care and attention, the writers cannot be held responsible in any way for any damages that may occur due to errors and / or deficiencies in this publication.