Introduction

It is very common for small and mid-sized organizations to outsource their IT Support. By doing this these organizations achieve significant cost savings while obtaining skilled technology support that was not available internally. However, there is an even better way to approach outsourcing IT support. By changing the overall mind-set of an organization about IT support, whether it is outsourced or internally staffed, organizations can see even better results in reduced costs and higher customer satisfaction.

 

Top Benefits of a Different Approach

Significantly Lower Costs
The typical help desk staff for an older or poorly implemented environment can consist of anywhere from three to seven individuals for an SMB depending on the level of coverage needed and other factors within an organization. This staff is expensive especially if they are experienced and well trained. Even though a regular outsourced help desk may save some money, this is still very expensive and costs will increase as your organization grows. This different approach looks the big picture and provides significant savings over a longer period.

Improved Productivity
With better systems to start with and as systems are improved constantly with root cause analysis, every process will get more efficient. Employees will be less stressed and focus more on their tasks. Employees will be more engaged with the technology and open communication will occur between IT and the rest of the organization.

Higher Client Satisfaction
When systems are more reliable and processes work without issues, clients get what they want faster and with better quality. This is a primary goal of every organization, make the client happy.

 

Implement A Better Enterprise Architecture

Start Fresh
Relaunch major systems. Start from scratch in most instances and migrate accounts and data into new server installations. Consider moving major applications to hosted applications or Software as a Service (SaaS).

Creatively Manage Costs
Slowly mix in new hardware. Lease hardware and major server applications. Capitalize.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Compare server virtualization and remote desktop deployment costs to standard servers and desktops over a 3-5 period and see that there is a large cost savings in the former approach. A good leader will consider all the costs associated with a specific function in the organization. Even more an excellent leader will consider these costs over a full business cycle.

Lock Down and Keep Secure
Once proper settings are in place, lock them down. Use policies to enforce rules and keep the enterprise safe and secure.

Set Up Regular Maintenance
Service packs need applied regularly. Health and performance monitoring should be put in place.

 

Relentlessly Attack The Root Cause of Issues

Change the Mind-set of Support Staff
Most support staff look at each issue as an instance that needs the fastest and least resource-intensive fix. Usually a solution to the immediate problem is done as quickly as possible. While this helps the immediate issue and everyone appears happy for the moment, the underlying issue may still be lurking out there. Help Desk staff needs to be re-trained to look at individual issues as part of the whole enterprise. Before any issue is solved, a questions must first be asked, "what caused this problem to occur?" True root cause analysis is not a simple task. Support staff needs to be taught these skills then held accountable for every incident they handle.

Benefits of Root Cause Analysis
The purpose of root cause analysis is not to fix the immediate issue, but rather determine what is really causing the problem. Fixing the immediate symptoms of a deeper issue can actually hurt the organization in the long-term. It may seem counter intuitive wait on an immediate fix, but a few extra minutes up front can save countless hours over a longer period. Also, ignoring a deeper issue can result in a growing problem that could cause even more harm to the organization.

Keep Track of Incidents
We utilize several different issue tracking systems depending on the needs of the client. The features of the system are not as important as having each incident logged and tagged. This approach allows management to see patterns with systems issues and staff competency gaps.

Sometimes You Leave It Be
On a rare occasion it will be determined that the ultimate fix for the root cause of an issue is not worth doing. This takes some skill to determine when this is the case. One formula to make this determination is that the time and effort to fix the cause is twice as much as the time and effort to fix the individual symptom times the number of occurrences predicted over a two year span.

Technology Is NOT Always The Issue
When a problem is encountered and IT is involved, there is an immediate assumption that the technology needs fixed. We are finding more and more that better solutions often come from fixing old business processes.

 

Prioritize Training

Managers Get Onboard
Include frontline managers early in the process of upgrading or re-implementing back-end systems. Help them to be aware of the reasons for the changes and the underlying benefits to their groups. Seek feedback in all areas. This type of open communication will go a long way in establishing a team approach to issues in the future and solving the root problems together. Most importantly, ask managers what their team's training needs are with current and new systems.

Be Real About Capabilities
The technical competencies of each person varies throughout an organization. Be honest in identifying what the capabilities of each person are. In our experience, typically less than 10% of users in an organization consume more than 90% of the support resources. These individuals should be identified then a plan should be developed with their managers as to how to train these people and get their skills up to date. After serious consideration has been made to helping a person and they still do not appear to improve, then another position might be necessary.

Document, Record, Publish
Standard business procedures need to be documented in a way that everyone can easily understand. Technical manuals are great for some but most need something a little more down to earth. Recorded video training is easier than ever to create and publish. Many companies even publish their materials using YouTube. Whether the training materials are documents, audio or video, they need to be easily found and accessed by everyone in the organization.

 

Summary

Summary Subsection
Blah blah blah.

More blah blah blah.