With the cost of owner ship of helpdesks coming down it now makes it
justifiable for any support department to benefit. The needs are similar to that
of an IT department but the system should be simple and customisable for that departments
specific needs.
Any department that finds itself receiving constant requests for their
services from staff via emails may see immediate benefits of a helpdesk. They
will be able to keep track of those requests, prioritise, schedule and most
importantly be bale to measure their work load. This is particularly important
if resources are scare and justification for more budget are required. Over time
it provides a consistent mechanism to measure incoming work.
Departments that can benefit specifically are Facilities management, Legal, Commercial
and Human Resources.
A solution aimed specifically at the IT support market will be overly complex
for most other departments to use. Seek out a vendor that has an application
that is generic in nature and you can tailor to your needs. Ideally the vendor
of your IT helpdesk will also have an application for other departments to use
and these can be purchased at discounted prices. The IT department will
also then already have the expertise to install and support it for you.
Emails are not the answer for managing requests for services as they can get
lost or missed amongst the sea of junk mail, it is hard to track the
responses and the only way to be sure of any history is to keep all emails received
and sent. Making you extremely unpopular with the manager of the email server. A
web based application provides all the benefits of self help, call
tracking that an IT department expects to realise.
Work flow is an important element to the progress of a support
request and the solution should be able to track the life cycle of a call
and create notes and audits of all the events.
A number of help desks now provide separate but integrated support solution models for General, IT and Customer support (example).
