Many companies run an informal
help desk built around one coworker’s knowledge of a system or program. Others have effective information technology (IT) help desks but end up
paying serious money to an individual who
roams the building from desk to desk solving myriad problems.
“The solution for many operations,” says
Rick Veno, senior consultant with Pomeroy IT Solutions, “is to integrate IT service
management through a company whose
core competence is managing IT.”
Smart Business talked to Veno about the
importance of first-tier help.
What is first-tier help?
That is simply the first point of contact
for a person who needs help with a system
or a program. Typically, a service provider
runs a first-tier help desk from a remote
campus location. An 800 number routes
trouble calls to the help desk, which opens
a trouble ticket and provides support. In
some cases, where the client has many
workers, there will be IT services at the
customer’s premises along with regional
support teams providing service for
remote locations.
In this support model this service can be
called level 1.5 support or ‘specialization’.
PC Support is a good example of this.
Second- and third-tier resources may be in-house, outsourced or in some cases, both.
They deal with more complex issues or
have deep expertise in particular areas.
What value is there to integrated IT service
management?
Many companies are living with an ineffective or expensive help desk. There is real
value to not spending resources on in-house
IT service management. But first, the company must figure out what it needs. Many
business executives read about ISO 2000 or
ITIL and figure that is what they require.
Then they need to ask whether it makes
sense to build it internally or to have a business relationship with a company that can
provide that service. That’s when the CTO
needs to do a cost-benefit analysis.
What about application development?
Usually, IT service management covers
typical help desk services — troubleshooting, logging, referring and escalating trouble calls. We also fill service requests and
provision access. Usually it is limited to
break-fix and request projects.
How does this fit a company’s strategic plan?
It makes sense to have one provider in
the desktop lifecycle. This is where a
provider adds the most value. From procurement to control to support to redeploy
or retire, it has the ability to execute and
does for many large and small business
accounts. Not only can it talk about best
practices for asset management, service
management and service delivery, but it
also designs a road map for tomorrow. You
need to determine what processes to
deploy first and the time frame to finish
these projects. If you try to build a project
without the core foundations of service
management, you will work very hard and
never get the ROI and benefits of a true
service management program.
Isn’t an enterprise that outsources IT in danger of losing control of key IT functions?
No, it is a good solution for a company
that knows its core competency does not
include help desk support. If your associates are killing you on surveys about service and support, it may be a good idea to
strategically outsource your first-tier help
desk and keep the second- and third-tier
workers in-house.
What can a business do to prepare its
employees for the coming of an integrated
program?
There are two groups to think about: the
existing IT people and the rest of the company. Typically, you can retain those with
subject-matter expertise as tier-two support workers — say for Blackberry support, SAP or POS. The generalists know
there is a reason their function is being outsourced.
For employees as a whole, the change
should be as seamless as possible. Don’t do
a big marketing campaign about the
changeover unless the previous situation
was truly horrible. Simply transfer the
same 800 number to a new location. Best
practice says to leave the old system and
the old data alone and start over. Try not to
import a lot of old ticket data.
In any case, migrating a help desk means
you must have a solid project plan, top-down support, strong relationships and a
proven methodology. Take some time to
analyze your category structure, use the
project as an opportunity to modify second
level support behavior in OLAs and, by all
means, interview the associates and read
associate surveys.
RICK VENO is a senior consultant with Pomeroy IT Solutions.
He is ITIL certified and has more than 25 years of management
and consulting experience. Projects have included ITIL-based
process analysis and solution recommendations, service-level
management implementations, service desk, incident and
problem management implementations. Reach him at
[email protected].