Technology

Choose the right tools

By Troy Sympson

In light of these troubled economic times, every company is looking at ways to slash budgets and cut costs. Often, a company will look at its service desk and say: “The service desk isn’t a profit center. It’s needed, but we don’t need to nurture and grow it. It’ll be fine as is.”

This type of thinking will cost you, not save you, money in the long run. If you cut corners and chip away at your service desk budget, eventually you won’t have the bandwidth and capacity to run your business.

“Remember that a large majority of companies’ IT budgets are wrapped around keeping systems running and ensuring that the people who use the systems remain productive,” says Kevin Miller, a director of service desk architecture at Pomeroy IT Solutions. “Today’s service desks are the epicenter of the business incident and request fulfillment management.”

Smart Business spoke to Miller about service desks, why they’re so important and how you can ensure yours is all it can be.

Why is the service desk so important in today’s business world?

IT departments are faced with daily challenges in the management and support of numerous and constantly changing end-user requirements, including desktops, lap-tops and handhelds. When one of the systems malfunctions or an end-user has an issue, you need a solution as quickly as possible. Businesses rely on the service desk to be the single point of contact for any issue that their end-users need assistance with. A capable service desk can even assist in driving out costs from on-site visits from technicians if properly executed.

Some service desks have implemented technologies to assist their overall environments, which addresses specific infrastructure incidents. Reducing call duration is one of the benefits of implanting these tools. Some of the other benefits are reduced training costs, improved first call resolution, streamlined processes and better incident tracking (most of the automated tools have built-in components that create incidents for reporting and trending analysis). Typically, incidents are sent to the on-site technical teams for resolution.

By implementing service desk tools, you are able to drive out an additional 15 to 20 percent of the dispatched incidents. Most importantly, giving the service desk the ability to resolve more issues as the single point of contact will increase your end-user client satisfaction.

What tools are popular in service desks right now? What benefits do they offer?

Password reset tools have the capability to remove up to 25 percent of the existing calls to the service desk, while automating functionality. Companies benefit from a rapid ROI and increased end-user satisfaction after adoption of this tool.

Knowledge based tools have the capability to reduce up to 5 percent of the potential calls received by the service desk by giving the end-user the first attempt at resolving the issue. As today’s environments change and we are seeing a different skill set of end-users entering the work force, we are seeing a higher request for end-user interfaces that give them the ability to resolve the issue before contacting the service desk.

Software deployment tools allow the service desk to push updates and new software to the end-user without any other department’s involvement. Once the security rights are granted and all process and procedures for deployments are being followed, the tools allow the service desk to be the single point of contact for more and more incidents.

There’s also the trend to move monitoring services to the desk where you have less expensive staff than in the NOC or server administrator and today’s tools make it easier to move those monitoring and management processes to the service desk.

Finally, user-provisioning tools allow the automation of end-user creation, modification and deletion, which allows for almost immediate updating of the user’s account, once the appropriate approvals are obtained through the workflow process.

What problems or issues can arise from these tools and/or service desks in general?

Training is the biggest issue in deploying service desk tools. A service desk needs to realize that a different level of technical talent is needed to assure that the tools are utilized correctly and efficiently. If you turn some of these tools over to inexperienced users, they can cause more damage to the environment than their potential worth. You do not want rogue agents to be able to modify the diagnostic tools that can compromise the data. One of the major issues of implementing tools is assuring that the tool has the appropriate security controls in place and that certain functionalities are secured.

What are the consequences a company faces if it doesn’t monitor and/or contain its service desks?

Monitoring the efficiency of the service desk is key — it allows the management staff to make any adjustments in their support model. Monitoring tracks many efficiencies such as average speed to answer, average call duration, first-call resolutions, call abandon rates and others. The key to a successful service desk is end-user satisfaction.

KEVIN MILLER is director of service desk architecture at Pomeroy IT Solutions. Reach him at (949) 929-6767 or kmille7@pomeroy.com.