The PC helpdesk is the interactive interface between the IT department and your business. Mark Wheeler looks at the challenges involved in outsourcing the helpdesk.
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Contents 
The difficulty of outsourcing
Helpdesk in-sourcing?
Successful Outsourcing
How can it be done?
Who's out there? |
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Outsourcing the helpdesk is commonplace in modern business. During the 1990s the IT helpdesk was amongst the first services to be cast free from the nest, and soon enough the whole of IT was dished out. These days virtually any business process can be isolated, segmented, and contracted to a third party.
| "If it's the first time you are thinking about outsourcing your helpdesk, you really need to get out and talk to people. It's going to affect everyone in your organisation every day." -- Sarah Cullen, Sarah Cullen & Associates |
What is the helpdesk?
The helpdesk is the true front line of your IT infrastructure. It's the place you call when your PC starts ticking, or an application goes down, or your mouseball is dirty, or all the monitors in the building start going blue, or if you don't quite know how to get that database to extract to Excel nicely.
Typically when the helpdesk is outsourced, it's done as part of a greater IT package. A PC helpdesk will usually offer first-level or second-level desktop, application, e-mail, Internet, network, and even server support.
However the helpdesk also often provides the first point of contact for issues ranging from spam, storage, and disaster recovery through to security, application development, and communications.
This places a helpdesk in a unique position at the coalface of the IT interactions within the business. As an outsourced consideration the helpdesk is a department that is going to have high interaction levels with every individual across business.
When it comes to outsourcing the helpdesk, this high-interaction level needs to be carefully considered -- and what is apparent is that in the past, this hasn't always be done effectively.
