IT professionals know all too well how delicate the balance of day-to-day operations within a business is, and how fundamental technology is in holding everything together. With continued growth, businesses often must move beyond the standard IT department model that works in the shadows and instead embrace a more comprehensive solution – which usually manifests in the form of an IT service desk.
To explain why this is often a good move, let’s outline four ways that an IT service desk can help and add value to your business.
IT Service Desks Can Unite Multiple Business Functions
Ticket service, asset management, and analytics: these are often fundamental components of any growing business. Smaller organizations may have specific employees and departments dedicated to handling these functions, but one major role of an IT service desk is performing all of these functions and more.
Integrating these functions is easier than you might think. Take SysAid, for example. Designed to integrate numerous roles under one roof, SysAid helps businesses unite troubleshooting, data, reporting, and automation initiatives with one dedicated solution. Those who are curious about its functionality need not make a lofty commitment, as the IT service management solution offers a free demo for businesses to try.
IT Service Desks Can Improve Communication
How many times have you contacted a business seeking answers about a product or service, only to encounter somebody who doesn’t know what’s going on? Now think about how employees and customers alike feel when they experience that during an interaction with your business.
One of the great benefits of IT service desks is that information and communication can be streamlined; by investing everything under one set of tools and software, functions like recording and fetching information becomes easy and consistent. No longer will one department lack information or communication on a particular ticket or task, due to the fact that every action taken is logged and every interaction is recorded. Those classic inter-departmental miscommunications will be a thing of the past!
IT Service Desks Can Automate Complex Functions
Think of all the time your employees, customer service agents, and IT professionals spend grinding through mundane yet necessary tasks. From tracking ticket statuses to helping service request authorizations, there are likely hours of work each week per employee that can be freed up with the use of an IT service desk.
By investing these tasks under the umbrella of one dedicated department, inter-departmental tasks can be made more efficient, customer service outcomes can be enhanced, and employee morale can be improved through the elimination of tedious and repetitious tasks.
IT Service Desks Can Monitor Trends in Performance
Analytics and metrics are often considered the holy grail of the business world when understanding performance. While it can be easy to focus on sales and profits trends, understanding how your business is performing internally can improve its performance with the broader public.
IT service desks with the proper software and suites available to them can monitor their own performance and that of other departments. From identifying recurring problems with particular software to analyzing the speed at which tickets are being handled, service desks can fetch this information on-demand and subsequently use it to determine how best to improve both internal and external company performance.
While some businesses have fears about the costs and complexity associated with forming their very own IT service desks, the improvements in company efficiency and productivity often more than pay for the on-paper costs associated with it. Given that these service desks can improve communication, monitor performance trends, automate various tasks and integrate multiple departments and functions effectively, there’s little to no reason to not consider pursuing this endeavor immediately.