Important Strategies for a Company - Essay Example

Following is the list and a brief description of important strategies that a company should follow in order to ensure that its IT users get adequate technical support: 1. Consolidation of the help-function: It is a good strategy to keep your help-desk system consolidated in one geographical location in order to eliminate the misunderstandings over “who to call” and to decrease the requests of support staff from direct approaches. A consolidated help desk boasts improved communication between IT specialists that were previously working in distinct groups.

It also helps in developing economies of scale in terms of equipment and data sharing. 2. Use of help-desk software or IT tools: There are a number of software packages (over 200 in the market) available that have customizable solutions for creating knowledge bases, expert systems, problem management, and change management. Also, these IT tools are now supported with databases of problems already configured in the set-up CD-ROMs, which can be easily integrated into help-desk software. Examples of such help-desk software include LiveTime Support, WonderDesk SQL, Numara Footprints, IncidentMonitor™, Simple Help Desk, etc. . 3.

Develop standard procedures for help-call cycle and communication: In order to have a good and competent technical support system, it is important that the organization defines standards both internally in terms of procedures and training of help desk staff via ISO 9000; and externally via the establishment of service-level agreements. 4. Performance Management: The performance of help-desk personnel should be measured and analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative data such as Call statistics (Call volume, call capture, call length, waiting times, resolution times, number of calls closed), Customer Feedback (by user surveys or random follow-up calls), Mystery caller (Tester questions posed anonymously and evaluated) and Benchmarking (by a consultancy company). 5. Encouraging Professionalism: To gauge and improve professionalism amongst the help-desk staff, it is important that they understand the need and value of their work.

They should be more than just “technical people” and be treated as any other employee of the company. Hence, the organization should invest in proper training, certification, or national vocational qualification developed specifically for support staff. 6. Outsourcing: In the case of large multi-national corporations, it is oftentimes cost-effective to outsource the help-desk division to another geography. The experience of some cases shows that, while there may be advantages to outsourcing, such a strategy must be used upon proper consideration and with care.

Yes, the help desk or technical support personnel is a relevant case of a socio-technical system where the usual scenario of work between the client (technology user), the help-desk personnel (IT user/problem solver), and IT system develop work-designs or inter-relationships between people and technology (Whitworth). Since having an efficient help desk does not always mean having the answer to the technical query, it also relates to human behavioral characteristics such as motivation, responsiveness to situations, and process improvement.