The help desk is almost always the first line of defense when it comes to dealing with IT issues. Unfortunately most businesses do not design their service desks around effectively responding to problems, nor do they proactively manage their IT operations in order to mitigate potential risks. Not proactively managing service calls or tickets makes it almost impossible to spot failure trends that eat into the it departments resources.
It’s not uncommon to analyze issues at a later date and realize that a majority of the IT resources time has been utilized by simple problems that if treated proactively could of saved the IT department a great deal of time, energy and worst of all loss of productivity. This loss of productivity is not limited to the IT department and affects all individuals who were held back from completing their normal work load because of down time.
An internationally recognized framework of excellent approaches for delivering high quality IT services can be found in The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL*). While this framework is extremely useful, organizations must still find and use the tools necessary if they wish to fulfill the framework’s expectations.
Unfortunately, most businesses lack the time, skills and resources needed to use the numerous service desk tools and technologies at their disposal. Their help desk staffs are at a distinct disadvantage when identifying and resolving an escalating volume of issues. It’s become common for these organizations to outsource their entire IT operations in an effort to have their IT needs handles more efficiently.
Such an effort frequently ends in failure. Most outsourcing agreements do not achieve their original objectives and result in termination or heavy restructuring. This is mostly caused when two parties don’t understand the need or desires of the other party.
Managed service providers (MSPs) are the supposed solution to the failure of traditional outsourcing arrangements. MSPs provide more specific services, which allow organizations to out-task IT management functions without giving their entire IT operations up to an outside party. Ironically, many MSPs are running into the same issues their clients do: they have trouble with the same help desk management issues.
In light of the problems with organizational skills, traditional outsourcing, and MSPs, a new generation of holistic yet versatile solutions is emerging to help IT organizations of all sizes improve their end-users. These help desk automation and management solutions have powerful reporting capabilities and are more flexibly priced than previous answers to this problem, effectively reducing an IT operation’s total cost of ownership (TCO) and increasing their return on investment (ROI).
This article will explain, through examining these issues, how an integrated help desk solution allows IT organizations and third-party service providers to proactively manage the IT environment to prevent IT problems from cropping up and respond more effectively to the IT issues that do surface.
BLM Technologies of Florida has been offering business, comprehensive and customizable IT solutions including On-site and Depot repair services. For more information about our service offerings please visit us at http://www.blmnow.com
