Organizations of all sizes employ Information Technology (IT). A startup company with a handful of employees may only be working through mobile phones and personal devices like laptops and tablets and using cloud-based services and apps. In contrast, a large conglomerate with thousands of employees and a global footprint may have a very complex IT infrastructure to support its operations around the world.
The role of the IT service desk
When an organization grows, its IT support system also evolves. What may have started as an additional hat to wear for the “nerd” of the team may progress to one or more dedicated employees who support IT needs, and eventually become a matured IT services and support department.
A prudent organization ensures that its IT infrastructure is robust, redundant, secure, and available when needed, but also works to avoid cost overruns and detrimental implementation delays. Ideally, an in-house IT department equipped with resources capable of meeting current and future, planned and unplanned needs is the answer. But the proverbial “change is the only constant” is the reality of the IT world. Maintaining and upgrading hardware devices, software applications and services, and network infrastructure is challenging.
The first step in bringing calm to the chaos is to have an IT service desk, which should serve as the “landing spot” or the single point of contact for any requests or incidents. And to serve efficiently, service desk personnel should be current on their training, certified as needed, and equipped with required tools, technology, and methodologies.
Attributes of an effective service desk
Planning the structure, size, and capabilities of an IT service desk should be in sync with an organization’s growth plan and road map. The IT network, hardware devices, and software applications to be deployed and supported each have their own life journey and phases when they require different levels of support. A service desk should be capable of expeditiously resolving or redirecting requests for resolution. A proactive service desk may can monitor networks and devices to predict and avoid possible outages and disruptions.
Organizations choosing a service desk may consider resource availability, privacy and security concerns, core competencies, and growth plans. These can all be factors in deciding between an internal service desk, a service desk outsourced to a provider, or even a hybrid approach. Keeping things in-house may provide a sense of better control, but with well-defined processes and service level agreements (SLA) in place, an external service desk may be able to deliver a better customer experience and be more cost-effective. A hybrid model could offer the best of both worlds.
Organizations that make the effort to analyze the journey paths of the components of their IT infrastructure – network, hardware and software – know what parts of that journey could and should be outsourced. Whether your organization’s IT services are outsourced or a hybrid mix with in-house analysts, IT service management (ITSM) should be a crucial piece of the process, including:
- Service offerings that can be suitably modified to meet specific requirements
- Ability to choose some or all service offerings to meet your organization’s needs
- SLAs that assure performance and accountability
- Tools and technologies that will work in tandem with your organization’s internal systems
- Ongoing training and certification processes for analysts
- Ability to scale up or down to meet cyclical or unplanned needs
- Built-in risk mitigation processes and redundancies
- Track record of success
- Cohesive work culture that respects not only the customers, but its own employees as well
- Value-backed pricing
Learn more
With more than 20 years of experience, Hexagon IT Services is comprised of customer-centric professionals who work closely with organizations that are at different levels of scale and growth journey. We help them to identify and deliver solutions to best fit their IT support needs.
Learn more about Hexagon IT Services here.
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