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The value proposition for help desks is changing. Instead of merely tactically responding to the unforeseen needs of IT end-users, the future is all about helping organisations get a better return for their IT and related investments. So where are the differences?

IT professionals under pressure to do more with less should take a serious look at automating software management processes. The benefits are not confined to cost control.

IT professionals under pressure to do more with less should take a serious look at automating software management processes. The benefits are not confined to cost control.

IT professionals under pressure to do more with less should take a serious look at automating software management processes. The benefits are not confined to cost control.

SAM can deliver significant benefits, but where do you start? Instead of being daunting, SAM needs to be broken down into achievable goals which provide an obvious benefit to the organization.

The growing movement to improve IT service delivery and support has led many companies to rethink the structure and composition of their service desks. When planning such a reorganization, IT management must keep in mind that customers of the support organization do not have technology problems, they have business problems. The technology is merely a tool that these users need to use to accomplish a business task. With this in mind, the result is a set of basic principles that should guide organizational design and planning.

When a support professional has access to knowledge, they can quickly assist customers with problems and inquiries. As a result Knowledge Management has become an essential practice within today’s support centers. Customer service and support software allow companies to manage the interactions with customers and employees. When combined with Knowledge Management, the support center is able to improve efficiencies, increase satisfaction, and reduce the cost of service.

The healthcare CIO is now in a position of direct influence on the quality of patient care. Doctors, pharmacists, administrators and medical research teams are more reliant than ever on electronic information and medical technology. As such, healthcare CIOs are gaining a stronger position to drive innovation, process change, and IT/business alignment. In healthcare, any system that is supporting a patient is not only business critical, its 24x7 availability is more critical than almost any other industry.

As your business grows, managing IT services becomes more complex and requires a new approach and new tools. A help desk was the right solution in the early days. Users would call with an issue, and technicians would attempt to fix it as quickly as possible. IT was predominately in a firefighting mode and help desk software had a fairly singular focus: tracking incidents and open tickets as responsibility passed from one person to another. In order for your business to scale, you must move from a world of firefighting to one of forward planning and preventative maintenance. If you're ready to shift from reactive technology support to proactive business service support, then it's time for a service desk.

To provide a more proactive mode of service delivery and support, you must avoid committing these sins with your service desk. Volume II of this five-part series explores these seven deadly sins and reveals how they can be avoided or neutralized with an integrated centralized knowledgebase.