Why implement Service Desk and how to choose a solution for your company

We’ll tell you why you need a Service Desk and what to look for when choosing a software and vendor.

Service Desk is a software tool that allows specialists to quickly respond to incidents and user requests. Service Desk solutions differ in functionality, licensing model, complexity of adaptation and development, and all of them simplify the process of receiving and processing calls.

Not all companies need to implement Service Desk. It makes no sense if the organization employs 100 people and for maintenance there are enough 2-3 shift IT specialists who work in the same room with users and can physically eliminate accidents. For companies where the number of employees exceeds 150 people, it is highly desirable to implement Service Desk.

What Service Desk Gives Your Company

Service Desk will organize work with service requests and become a tool for analyzing behavioral and performance metrics of personnel.

Thanks to Service Desk, executives:

Collect statistics on personnel: how many times, for what reason they go to the IT department. If applications in the Service Desk are frequent and associated with ignorance of the principles of working on a PC, the boss should think about training staff.

Gather statistics of equipment failures and decide whether to update it.
They evaluate the quality of work of IT professionals: how they respond to applications, whether they have tools in their arsenal to prevent and eliminate incidents, etc.

They are planning to develop the infrastructure of their IT departments to support work with growing volumes of data.

Technical Service Desk:

Reduces the burden on IT professionals – a system appears in which they manage the life cycle of each request and save options for solving the problem for subsequent calls to them.

Reduces the number of IT requests in the event of a mass service failure or prevention. This is possible thanks to software notifications of technical problems and the timing of their elimination.
It allows you to quickly record, qualify applications and not lose them, since applications come from convenient channels: instant messengers, by mail, by phone.

If chaos reigns in your organizational processes, software will not help: automation of debugged processes increases their efficiency – and vice versa – automation of chaos increases confusion. You need to choose a solution after you put things in order in the company.

How to choose a Service Desk solution for a company

To choose a software option for Service Desk, you need to analyze the goals and objectives of the business, understand the automation scheme of existing processes. Most likely, “pulling” a ready-made solution to your requirements will not work, because Service Desk consists not only of software. Of great importance is the qualification of IT personnel, an approach to work and order in organizational processes. If everything is normal, then you are ready to implement Service Desk.

Consider 5 steps for choosing software.

Step 1. Evaluate Total Desk Service Ownership

Understand the cost of implementing and maintaining a Service Desk. Forecasting the financial performance of the company as a whole depends on a correct budget estimate. Costs consist of:
hardware and software;
Licenses
additional modules of functionality (if there is a need for them);
services of a vendor or his partner;
system development, maintenance, staff training, software version updates, etc.

If the amount suits you and the company has resources to maintain the system for several years, proceed further.

Step 2. Find out the opinion of the team

It seems easier to transfer the task of deploying Service Desk to the IT department. But this decision is erroneous. It is better to look at the processes in the company from the outside and hire an external consultant. He will take into account the general goals of the business and select the best solution.

Before inviting a specialist to the company, ask the IT staff what they think about the changes, what automation functions are needed by the company, internal users and personally them. Specify recommendations for specific solutions and suppliers. This information will help the consultant to formulate an offer from several software options.

If the organization is large, create a project team and appoint a person responsible for its implementation. Delegate authority to him to make decisions, including unpopular ones.

Step 3. Check out the software licensing models

To use Service Desk, purchase a single server license and personalized licenses for IT employees. Named licenses are designed for each specialist. If you want to free one of the registered licenses, an employee is blocked in the system, a new one is added to the vacated space.
Connecting end users to the Service Desk system is most often not licensed.

Step 4. Explore the software with the desired functionality

Back to the list of software requirements. Each company has its own, but common ones can be distinguished:
modern, user-friendly interface that all users of the system should understand;
availability of a self-service portal: each internal user has a personal account to monitor the status of the application and solve simple problems at the prompt of the system;
auto answers – the user receives a response about the registration of the application and notification of its implementation;
the ability to create SLAs with different sets of metrics;
auto-assignment and reassignment of responsible persons;
setting up several communication channels: instant messengers, email, sms;
the ability to create reports and upload them in a convenient format;
assets and equipment databases;
service quality assessment system;
stable operation regardless of the number of users and simultaneous access to it;
encryption of the data of any employee, as well as their backup copy in case of accidents in the system;
the ability to regulate the access rights of employees in the system;
resistance to cracking passwords.

Step 5. Select a vendor and deploy Service Desk

Estimate the maturity level of several vendors and stop at 2-3. Form a request for proposal, wait for answers and analyze information from candidates.

Important for you:
cost of software, licenses and implementation. In what form the license is supplied;
terms and cost of equipment;
the amount of remuneration of people engaged in the development and maintenance of software;
the employment of employees on your part – at what stages, how long will it take;
software updates – whether you need to pay extra for them or purchase a license again.

If you are not sure that you have chosen the right solution, do not risk it. Consult an external consultant or supplier manager.

Thanks to an integrated approach to the selection of software, you will find and implement exactly the system that will improve user support and at the same time reduce the cost of their maintenance. Good luck

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