For many businesses, IT has fast become one of the costliest departments – eating up revenue and human resources.
IT management must be prioritised to reduce expenses and optimise business productivity.
In the age of evolving cloud and mobile demands, it has become increasingly difficult for some growing companies to deal with offering IT helpdesk services in house.
However, the emergence of cognitive technologies has been a breath of fresh air for the development of helpdesk software.
>See also: How to choose the right help desk software: a step-by-step guide
One of the most valuable ways that helpdesk support software can help a business is to improve the end user’s interaction with the company’s interface.
Customer issues can be reported in a standard format, with clients receiving company communications in an appropriate and well-timed manner, such as via status notification emails.
A 2014 survey of helpdesk software implementation found that 95% of respondents saw a significant increase in end-user satisfaction.
Software that offers a highly user-friendly and modern interface can help to avoid any deployment complexities further down the line, facilitating the speed of adoption.
Outsourcing the IT helpdesk can assist in solving several IT problems, such as reducing costs and improving routes to enterprise mobility management (EMM) – allowing organisations to secure and manage apps and content across a range of mobile devices.
Helpdesk software can provide a toolset for setting up a BYOD (bring your own device) policy. Each device can be enrolled via email or SMS onto the system, taking away the need to give out the company’s Wi-Fi password, and allowing passwords to be changed without involving users.
Most helpdesk support systems include a centralised user portal for staff, providing a single place for users to create tickets, view the status of open issues and close resolved tickets.
The portal can also be used to relay any important information to users, such as planned downtime. The system can triage each call, ensuring each issue is dealt with by an expert in that particular field.
>See also: How to get employee buy-in for new software
This frees up IT employees so they can redirect their time to higher-level tasks that contribute greater to the business’s overall value.
As a happy by-product, the ticketing management system allows a knowledge database of historical incidents to be collated – meaning the business can start to respond effectively to those recurring issues, making a significant impact on resolution time and workload.
Some helpdesk packages can also offer companies the added option of a configuration management database (CMDB).
This keeps a track of all the components in the IT system and maps out the relationships between each component, meaning organisations are better equipped to keep a track of changes and predict the impact of those changes on the business.
