HELP DESK
NAVIGATING THE PATH TO BUSINESS & IT INTEGRATION
THE
FUTURE
OF
THE
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The Help Desk Evolution
Increasing Importance of Business/IT Integration
Top Future IT Issues
Steady Approach to Stable Applications
Moving from Reactive to Proactive IT
Developing a Long-Term IT Plan
Implementing Customized IT Solutions
The Help Desk’s Potential
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE HELP DESK EVOLUTION
A holistic approach to business-IT integration. The idea of “IT support” has certainly evolved dramatically in the last 30 years; the Help Desk today is much more than a Call Center or a small staff of internal IT specialists. The Help Desk is positioned to work with its business partners to optimize IT’s roll in operations and development. The speed of the technological evolution has intensified, especially as businesses transition from a centralized approach to work and computing. The when and where of work has changed, compelling Help Desks to adapt and adjust to its customers’ requests and expectations.
TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL
A Help Desk—or Service Desk—can take business to the next level of IT planning and management. A Help Desk now aims help a business expand its computing capabilities, boosting productivity and efficiency in the process, with a thoughtful, customized IT methodology.
EXPERIENCED
While it may be easy to envision 24x7 operations with a remote workforce, the transition and implementation can be difficult for any business that doesn’t consolidate IT management and monitoring. Help Desks, by their nature of providing continuous, remote support to clients across the country, have met and overcome these technical challenges for many years. That experience—in dealing with tasks like equipment repairs, service outages, and incident resolutions—has Help Desks well positioned to help any business address the many issues involved with taking it operations outside its brick- and-mortar presence.
Transitioning from Solving Problems to
Supporting Businesses
GET AGILE
Help Desks also help businesses stay agile, ready to adapt to technological changes and advancements as they occur, and ready to maintain business operations during emergency situations and implement disaster-recovery plans when necessary.
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About a third of
CEOs and business
leaders expect to
attribute more than
half of revenues to
digital by 2019.
DIGITAL
REVENUE
GROWTH
HELP DESK
Cloud Computing
IT is the epicenter of business moving forward.
Help Desks, increasingly, strive to understand the core business and its goals. It’s interviewing key leaders, learning what they’re trying to accomplish, identifying challenges, and finding technology solutions to overcome roadblocks to success. IT and business communication is more important than ever, so business can keep pace with emerging technologies, understand and meet customer expectations, and have a strategic plan and understand what tools and applications they’ll depend on in the future.
Importance of Business + IT Support
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Security Technologies
Cloud Computing
Business Analytics
Application
Development
Wireless/Mobile
(Source: Computerworld Forecast)
Global IT spending projected to total $3.8 trillion in 2015, 2.4 percent increase from 2014.
(Source: Gartner Inc. Forecast)
IT Spending Forecast
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TOP FUTURE
IT
ISSUES
How businesses will embrace IT support and
its advantages.
SMB spending on the cloud is expected to increase by 20 percent in the next five years, according to PCWorld. Businesses are making the move to the cloud primarily for web-hosting and email purposes, but with cloud vehicles like Microsoft Office 365, opportunities exist to implement workflow processes and automation tools that improve business operations. Help Desks increasingly will be tasked to develop and manage cloud- computing solutions, andv will have to monitor and test applications that offer cloud alternatives.
Help Desks are consulting and advising businesses on how IT strategy and business strategy intersect; they’re keenly aware of how technology is helping, or potentially hindering, business growth. When IT and business are aligned and working together, technology supports the business goials in many ways, which leads to smart investments and strong returns. The IT conversation is changing from, “How can IT solve this problem today?” to “How can IT make the business better tomorrow?”
As more businesses take their operations to the cloud, data protection and information security is critical. Many businesses view systems and network security as a barrier to being productive, so Help Desks will take the lead in ensuring businesses’ data is secure and encourage end-users to encrypt their devices, especially laptops. Information security will be a significant task for Help Desks, as work and information sharing is increasingly conducted on mobile devices
IT Driving Business
Data Protection
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IT is no longer a barrier to business success—it’s a necessity to business success. IT is one of the operational pillars of any organization, right there with sales, finance, marketing, etc. In recent years, the conversation has shifted from the specific applications and networks IT develops and works in, to the full-scale technology planning and support IT provides to an organization.
IT Investment Areas
Managing Various Computing Devices,
Communications Tools
Communication drives business. Technology has changed how businesses interact with their customers, and it has set new standards for service expectations for end-users. As a younger, more tech-aware generation enters the workforce, IT support must adjust to meet new employees’ and customers’ needs and requests. The expectations will be high, for service that solves problems quickly and easily. How will Help Desks and their partners address these new expectations? Are self-service incident-resolution portals needed? Will IT support solve issues via instant messenger or social media? In any situation, Help Desks will consult with their partners on identifying and implementing the applications that make the most business sense; it’s critical that applications have matured properly and have been tested for quality and reliability. Above all else, it’s about finding the right technology to get the right result for the business and its employees and customers.
STEADY APPROACH TO STABLE APPLICATIONS
Nearly 40 percent of
companies expect to stop
providing devices to workers
by 2016, due to
(Source: Gartner Inc. CIO Survey)
BYOD Benefits
Increased employee satisfaction
Reducing/avoiding costs
Mobile workforce
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MOVING FROM REACTIVE TO PROACTIVE
IT
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Shifting from Incident Resolution to Avoidance
Data-driven decisions. What are end-users calling about? How often are they calling about a particular issue? The answers to these questions (as shown in the chart below) inform where an organization is inefficient and dictate broader solutions that can solve these problems.
Help Desks are increasingly bridging the gap for their customers, identifying inefficiencies and observing how an organization interacts with IT. While initially concerned with configuring and organizing IT environments for improved support, Help Desks are taking the next step and thoroughly examining how business can maximize IT service and support. Help Desks themselves increasingly rely on metrics like Key Performance Indicators and Critical Success Factors to, in part, answer the question, “Are we operating as efficient as possible?” Help Desks constantly review data on call volume, ticket times, talk times, etc., scoring and monitoring these and other metrics to ensure the work that needs to be done is completed timely and correctly. Reporting on regular issues and resolutions represents a significant challenge for businesses; often, they’re concerned with their main mission and can overlook this necessary function.
Top 10 User Issues
1.
User Administration
I’m locked out of my network.
VPN won’t connect.
2.
Microsoft Outlook
I can’t sign into Outlook. How do I
share my Outlook calendar?
3.
Citrix
Need help creating a new
account. Need help changing
user settings.
4.
Email Issues
I’m not receiving email. Email
send/receive is slow.
5.
Internet Browser
Can I change my default
broswer? Can I save my favorites
list?
6.
Printer
Can’t connect printer. Can’t find
network printer.
7.
User Question
Need to add user to admin account.
Need assistance with software
update.
8.
Site Connectivity
Website not updating. Website
uptime is slow.
9.
Server Administration
Server is down. Website uptime is
slow
10.
Other
Can I sync Outlook to my mobile
device. Can I recover deltered
emails?.
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DEVELOPING A LONG-TERM
IT
PLAN
The technology and business
evolution continues. The IT
support sector, perhaps more
than any other industry, has
experienced
first-hand
how
computing has changed—and
improved—how
businesses
operate and serve their
customers. Helps Desks have
morphed from a small, onsite
group
of
technicians,
to
full-scale, remote, IT-integration
specialist teams, trained to
conduct a top-to-bottom
business analysis and then install
agile systems and networks that
will maximize an organization’s
ability to achieve its goals.
They’re focused on using data
analysis to develop the right
solutions,
maintaining
open
communication
with
their
partners and ensure the
business and IT plans are
aligned. They’re prepared for
whatever changes might come,
allowing businesses to focus on
their core mission.
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7-STEP APPROACH TO STRATEGIC PLANNING
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ENGAGE PARTNERS IN PROCESS
PRIORITIZE IT EFFORTS
ESTABLISH IT GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE
MONITOR IT PERFORMANCE
MANAGE IT VALUE
MEASURE BUSINESS BENEFITS
ALIGN BUSINESS AND IT
IMPLEMENTING CUSTOMIZED
IT
SOLUTIONS
ANALYZE
PLAN
DESIGN
DEPLOY
MANAGE
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1.
User Administration
I’m locked out of my network.
VPN won’t connect.
2.
Microsoft Outlook
I can’t sign into Outlook. How do I
share my Outlook calendar?
3.
Citrix
Need help creating a new
account. Need help changing
user settings.
4.
Email Issues
I’m not receiving email. Email
send/receive is slow.
5.
Internet Browser
Can I change my default
broswer? Can I save my favorites
list?
6.
Printer
Can’t connect printer. Can’t find
network printer.
7.
User Question
Need to add user to admin account.
Need assistance with software
update.
8.
Site Connectivity
Website not updating. Website
uptime is slow.
9.
Server Administration
Server is down. Website uptime is
slow
10.
Other
Can I sync Outlook to my mobile
device. Can I recover deltered
emails?.
Businesses have just begun to realize the potential positive effects of Help Desks. As Help Desks become increasingly embedded with their business partners’ day-to-day operations, understanding the systems and applications that drive the company, IT can improve those operations and help the business in numerous and various ways. Additionally, as Help Desks continue to adapt and adjust to their business partners’ needs, Help Desks themselves will review and analyze how they themselves operate, identify areas for improvement, and install new technologies and processes to augment their own service delivery—in the same way they help their business partners every day.
THE HELP DESK’S POTENTIAL
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Help Desks will continue to evolve into highly-skilled businesses technology services, advising business partners and recommending the best uses of the Help Desk’s services to maximize business productivity and efficiency.
Help Desks will increasingly assume the role of a trusted advisor to the business partners, serving in a consultant capacity when identifying and developing IT solutions. Help Desks will pursue all possible solutions, including identifying third-party providers that will address the business’s issues; the Help Desk will remain plugged in to ensure optimal IT service performance.
Help Desks will seek to develop and install, where applicable, self-help and self-healing options for business end-users to solve regular, general IT incidents, either on their own or through automation, to drive down the need for businesses to invest in and maintain internal IT support staff.
Help Desks will remain agile and flexible, staying current with emerging technologies, applications, and operating systems, so that they can work with a diverse and wide range of business partners. Help Desks will be able to make recommendations and optimize environments for items like BYOD, mobile or fixed devices, and cloud-based or physical, central data storage centers.
Help Desks, in everything they do, will measure their performance with various metrics and reports to identify their own and their partners’ areas of success and improvement, suggesting and implementing technologies that address those issues and improve business operations.
