A recent survey undertaken by the Help Desk Institute and Hornbill Systems has found that 85% of projects to consolidate service desks were completed on time and within budget. Furthermore, the resulting centralised service desks reported increased productivity and revenue, cost reductions, increased customer satisfaction, optimised services, and a surprisingly positive effect on staff.

The survey found that the main reason why organisations do not go ahead with service consolidation projects is internal politics. Amongst the sample of organisations that had completed a CSD project the biggest issue overcome was having the right skills at the front line. When the new system went live, people found that they enjoyed dealing with different types of service calls. Not only did it broaden their skills, and make their working day more interesting, it helped to overcome the island or ‘them and us culture’ between different departments.

The survey also showed that the success rate of CSD implementations is much greater than the organisations themselves expect, and that most successful projects were driven by the IT department. Many of the managers questioned in the survey felt that IT now had a better service culture than other departments within the organisation.

Stephanie Roddy, from Camelot commented in the report, “Contrary to popular belief, consolidating our service desks did not decrease our headcount. In fact, headcount has increased as the number and type of requests has changed and gone up. We have introduced an additional tier of senior support analyst at the 1st line and consequently improved career progression internally. What’s more our analysts see more of the business and therefore are in a better position to contribute to wider aspects of Camelot.”

Gerry Sweeney, Managing Director of Hornbill Systems commented, “The survey results support a theory that we have long held at Hornbill. By looking at service delivery from the customers’ point of view, organisations from every sector can provide a much better service whether they are answering employees’ IT, HR or Facilities requests or serving many of thousands of external consumers. By centralising service desks through appropriate supporting technology and focusing on the customers’ needs, companies have had good results, where staff actually enjoy a more varied and diverse job role. This has the happy consequence of ‘soft’ benefits in terms of better served customers, as well as all the return on investment and other economic benefits of consolidation.”

The survey report entitled The Consolidated Service Desk, an Achievable Goal? is available from Hornbill Systems.

-ends-

NOTES TO EDITORS
About The Help Desk Institute (HDI)
Founded in 1988 in by Howard Kendall, The Help Desk Institute (HDI) is the leading authority on service desk and IT support related issues, providing specialist information and research about the technologies, tools and trends of the industry. It is Europe’s only support network for IT service desk professionals, providing service management consulting, customised training courses and qualifications.

Acting as an independent advisor, HDI captures and disseminates creative and innovative ideas for tomorrow's service desk and support operation. HDI sets the standards for the IT support industry and is the conduit for delivering knowledge and career enhancing skills to the professional community.

It also offers the opportunity for international recognition of the support centre operation through a site certification audit programme. It members span numerous industries and include Accenture, AOL (UK), Barclays Bank, Computer Associates, ITV, O2, T K Maxx, United Biscuits and YELL Ltd.

Further information about the HDI can be found at
www.hdi-europe.com