When computer problems occur in this day and age, they have the potential to bring entire operations grinding to a halt.
Productivity Costs
Imagine how much productivity is lost during a 30 minute Internet outage, then add up the outages that have occurred in a business throughout the year and there are bound to be major gaps in output. Simply put, it’s better for business when an IT department is efficiently run.
When a company doesn’t have a help desk, a source for employees to log errors and issues throughout the day, problems pile up. Not facing these issues head on leads to hardware failures, breaches in security and hacking incidents. Most businesses would love to staff an IT helpdesk, but few have the financial resources to do so.
Handling Support
Fortunately, there are methods of outsourcing your IT support efforts to off-site companies. These providers give employees a chance to log issues they face, and timely support in handling those requests.
The help desk essentially cuts out extended wait times using an automated system to log issues. No longer do employees visit the IT department when a computer goes down, an email ticketing system alerts personnel to the problem and describes the nature of the issue. A well-run helpdesk can enable IT to research the problem before they even begin to treat it. Ticketing systems also let IT managers arrange tasks for employees based on priority. This gives managers more control over their IT resources directly, and helps ensure that computer networking in Long Beach can continue unimpeded.
Here are three other methods businesses can utilize a help desk to improve the quality of their IT services.
- Help desks are efficient. They prioritize a work load, allow managers to review work that was completed, and provide trackable metrics that improve workflow over time.
- Managers can properly staff a department once each task has a priority. Help desk systems help IT personnel regulate their own workloads.
- Rather than a phone call, where words can be misconstrued or forgotten, a help desk creates a record of the correspondence. This helps ensure IT personnel actually address the problem.
Some companies maintain a combination of the two services, paying to staff a small IT department in-house for executives while basic user functions are outsourced.