Should You Outsource Your Help Desk?

Many IT managers dream of delivering their internal help desk to an external provider. Others fear it is the worst that can happen. In the new era of bringing your own device (BYOD), it's a more consistent decision.

In the meeting room and in the executive suite, the idea of ​​downloading a significant portion of IT operations into a third party stimulates the fantasies of great cost savings that will drive the end result. Many CIOs believe that IT Help Desk Outsourcing will allow them to re-use their IT equipment and resources for higher-order jobs more focused on the company's core competency. They also consider the delivery of routine projects, such as desktop updates, to the support service subcontractor, freeing up even more resources.

Other high-level IT executives have more troubling visions of disappointing service, disgruntled end-users, IT-related riots and intangible costs that undermine the alleged efficiencies that help-desk outsourcing could bring. More in-depth in the IT the organization, help-desk outsourcing is often seen as an absolute nightmare. The biggest fear is that the senior management will start significant redundancies to get immediate savings, while minor concerns include the need to get rid of the bad work of third parties.

Each of these dreams is based on reality. The way an organization handles the decision to use an external help desk service and looks for one and then creates and maintains the relationship, all determines what kind of dream becomes reality.

Help Desk Outsourcing Evolution

Outsourced IT Help Desk is a huge category and the help desk is only a small but significant part. Other forms of IT outsourcing may include delivering complete data centers to third parties, or perhaps limiting themselves to portions that can cover networks and business applications. The help desk is often one of the first services that companies outsource and sometimes acts as a pilot for outsourced follow-up services. It is also important to take into account the often blurred difference between outsourcing, which simply means that an outside party is providing a service, rather than the transfer, which specifically means that the service is provided by a foreign company, presumably with costs of considerably less labor.

At the same time, the cloud interferes with traditional definitions of outsourcing. Desktop as a Service (Daas) and other types of cloud-based virtual desktops are new ways for non-traditional players to offer services that overlap with the traditional help desk. Gartner Inc. recognized him in his latest "Quadrante Magica" report on the subject. The influential "Magic Dials" of Gartner places the sellers along the x and y axes to show the relative strength and breadth of different players.

In its 2013 report, Gartner consolidated the Magic Desk and Help Desk quadrants to reflect changes in support services. In the text of the report for the quadrant that Gartner now calls the "Magic Quadrant for end-user Outsourced Help Desk Services, North America", Gartner analyst David Ackerman and two colleagues highlighted the main sources of the evolution of the category.

"An evolving workforce model, which is more mobile and more virtual than ever, will continue to challenge traditional work models and IT service delivery approaches," said Ackerman and co-authors William Maurer and Bryan Blitz. "The net impact will be a greater demand in service desk functions and continued growth in support of mobile devices. These factors will also favor the growth of cloud printing and cloud storage services. We see that BYOD accelerates ... rapidly in North America in the next three years ".