Your service desk tickets have a story to tell, but need to be interrogated

A few years ago we took on the service desk management of a medium-sized law firm. It had just over 1000 users.  We discovered that the internal service desk had been dealing with 3,500 support requests per month – almost one per week per user, where we would expect between one and two per month. We discovered that there were five different locations, each with their own legacy system, software and back end.

It transpired that, over a period of time, the firm had acquired four other businesses, and had not integrated them, nor had any plan to do so. Based on an expected 1,500 service requests per month, the business had resourced a service desk 2.5 times bigger than should have been required, carrying the costs both of the extra resource as well as the loss of billable hours.

The business had resourced a service desk 2.5 times bigger than should have been required, carrying the cost of both extra resources and loss of billable hours

It’s not just the volume of service desk requests that matters, but what they’re for. Recurring problems can indicate more structural issues, such as server configuration or security vulnerabilities. Password resets were once the service desk mainstay; some companies even had dedicated ‘password reset’ teams. Even now, the service desks in some organisations can spend most of a Monday morning helping users to reset their passwords. Self-service password resetting is a standard component of most Microsoft 365 subscriptions, but frequently goes unused. Your IT team may also have the option to set up ‘net-bots’ to provide step-by-step guidance – Azure has a number of templates that are easy to configure.

IT Metrics should form a core part of the MI available to senior management

For every organisation, IT metrics should form a core part of the MI available to senior teams. But don’t forget the information hiding in the humble service desk ticket – it could just save you a lot of time and money.

Boardroom Briefing

This blog is extracted from Bedroq’s latest ‘Boardroom Briefing’, aimed at helping CEOs, Operations Directors and Finance Directors better understand how the IT is working in their business. The full briefing is available to read here