If your enterprise has multiple service desks in different geographies using disparate, disjointed tools and supporting diverse but possibly overlapping constituencies, you may be wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. Service desk consolidation is a proven strategy for eliminating that waste.
B M C I N D U S T R Y I N S I G H T S
SERVICE DESK CONSOLIDATION
CUTS COSTS AND INCREASES
SERVICE QUALITYBy Gerry Roy and Frederieke Winkler Prins, BMC So ware
The service desk is the last place you should try to cut back. For external-facing organizations, quality support keeps customer loyalty and repeat business high and ensures that partners
and suppliers can do business with you cost e? ectively. For your IT organization, which supports internal customers, quality service drives up employee productivity by ensuring that problems are resolved, questions are answered, and requests are ? lled promptly. Having a solid service desk, where agents can quickly prioritize issues based on business impact, also helps you prevent or minimize outages of business-critical services and the associated lost revenues.
With service being as important as it is, does the idea » A billion-dollar energy supplier cut service desk of cutting hundreds of thousands - even millions - costs from $89 to $57 per hour and realized an of dollars in spending on service desk operations annual savings of more than $17 million.seem a bit crazy? Simply slashing service budgets » A major insurer consolidated multiple service desks, would, of course, be risky and ill advised. Service facilitated the adoption of IT Infrastructure Library®desk consolidation, however, is a smart move. This (ITIL®) best practices, and saved $2.5 million.highly successful strategy is yielding dramatic reduc- » A leading ? nancial services ? rm retired 40 service tions in service costs while delivering signi? cant desk tools, reduced case volumes up to 80 percent, improvements in e? ciency and service quality. Here and, in the ? rst six months, reduced the change-to-are a few examples: incident ratio by 10 percent.
» A er consolidating 25 service desks into one, a These enterprises didn't just blindly slash the budgetsglobal telecom company realized a 30 percent of their service desk operations. Instead, they changed reduction in mean time to repair, a 60 percent their approaches in ways that enhanced e? ciency reduction in unplan ned downtime, and a $32 million and e? ectiveness. As a result, they cut service desk savings for the organi zation's IT service manage- spending and increased ROI in the processes, tech-ment consolidation e? orts. nology, and people that enable service excellence. B M C I N D U S T R Y I N S I G H T S
The State of the Service Desk Today management, training, sta? ng, and energy con-In many enterprises today, customer service is siloed, sumption all contribute to excessive spending disjointed, and inconsistent. Customers contact di? er- for customer service. The high cost might be justi? ed ent call centers for di? erent products - and for di? er- if the spending led to more e? cient, e? ective service ent geographies. There are separate support teams for delivery. This disjointed approach, however, negatively partners, suppliers, and employees. Employees call a? ects customer satisfaction as people struggle to one number to ask questions about bene? ts, another ? gure out whom to call instead of being able to go to a for computer problems, and a third when they need single source for all their needs. Service quality is o en new equipment. incon sistent and inferior.
Rapid business expansion, whether through organic The Path to Consolidationgrowth or mergers and acquisitions, has caused the Many enterprises see the value of consolidating these proliferation of multiple service desks across most scattered and disconnected service desks into a enterprises. Having so many distinct entities, many of seamless environment that supports the full range of service needs. Inertia, however, o en prevents enterprises from moving aggressively to unify service delivery. Companies that have successfully merged service Service desk consolidation desk operations into an integrated involves replacing disparate whole have done so by focusing on point solutions with a single three key areas:
service desk solution that uni? es » Standardizing on proven best-all service desks onto a single, practice processesintegrated platform. » Adopting a standard service desk techn... [download for more]
