“Yankee Group has found that majority of IT problems are caused by human error. As a consequence, Gartner estimates that most IT departments spend upwards of 80% of their time trying to resolve problems rather than more directly helping an organization achieve its business objectives”

Enterprise CIOs are often helpless with the facts that they have very limited budget, rare scope for improvement and low resource utilization.  These factors turn IT organizations operating into silos and changing IT infrastructure into “black box”.  So the biggest question of the hour is “How effectively can CIOs consolidate their IT operations and align it with business objectives?”.  That is where the term “Global Service desk” plays very critical role in organization roadmap.

Now the next question – “Why should CIOS have Global Service Desk (GSD)?”.  Technology trends are good; implementing those trends is great.  But are Enterprise IT functions having nightmares with certain perennial concerns? Well, I think so.  Let us check those concerns right away –

a) IT support for every employee within the organization becomes hugely cumbersome

b) Cost of replacing the help desk Engineer is expensive as it includes recruiting, training, and human resources processing costs

c) Building a Service Desk with engineers skilled in supporting multiple hardware and software platforms is always challenging

d) Determining the right number of staff and finding people with the right skills who are willing to work during weekends and night shifts is difficult

e) Low incident/ticket volumes often make it impractical to manage cost vs effective utilization of resources.

f) Multi-vendor Vs. Single Vendor dilemma

Can Enterprises solve the above mentioned problems by setting up a GSD? Well, Enterprises don’t have a choice in the long run.   Service Improvement is the goal of a GSD and it ensures that the IT operations are focussed towards achieving business objectives. The prime objective to set up Global service desk is to aim for exceeding customer expectations with  improved quality of service and reduced cost.  When repeated incidents go unnoticed, it can make a huge impact in all sorts of costs (Resource, communication and vendor).  By taking an integrated approach of ITIL process through Incident Management, Problem Management and Change Management, GSD can significantly reduce these costs. One goal of every business is to achieve the highest possible quality at the lowest possible cost. So the cost and Quality are the two key things which need to be measured on on-going basis.

So How should Enterprises measure the success/ failure of its Service Desk?

a)      Cost per call/email/Incident:  In a Service Desk, the most effective cost metric is cost per call/email/Incident, and the best indicator of quality is customer satisfaction. This is key cost attributed in attending a call/email/Incident by the Service Desk personnel.

b)      Time to respond and resolve:  There is difference between mutually agreed SLAs and timelines vs. actually achieved. First level resolution rate (or) First call resolution (FCR) is the key performance indicator for the Service Desk.  If the Service Desk is achieving a low cost per contact by transferring and escalating contacts to other support levels – Level 2, Level 3, Desktop Support, Vendor Support, etc., then it will dramatically increase the Total Cost of Ownership.

To sum it up, GSD focuses on customer priorities, helping them to enter new markets, adopt new processes, provide better operational flexibility and finally enabling them to serve their clients better.