This article is going to use a lot of three letter acronyms (TLAs) – but bear with me, it’s not too technical!
When it comes to IT maintenance and support, it’s apparent that SMEs are paying much more per PC than their corporate cousins.
I was speaking recently with a consultant in my business about help desk metrics and how to improve response times for our clients. He told me that when he ran an internal help desk at HP with an SOE and good work practices, he handled thousands of calls, achieved an average ticket resolve time of six minutes, and an impressive two-out-of-three calls being resolved by level one staff (who are the cheapest resources in a technical support business).
This got me thinking about how we score servicing thousands of computers in SME businesses where an SOE is unheard of. I realised pretty quickly that our statistics would not even come close to these resolve times, and that many calls are escalated to more senior staff to find a solution – driving the cost of resolution even higher.
We all know that where there are computers there are problems, right? Well, I would go so far as to say the more computers there are, the more problems per computer will occur. And, the more variation we have with our computers, the more variations of problems and therefore, the more solutions required. This all results in more time and expense; and for the employees involved, more downtime.
So, I’m now convinced that the only way to drive down the total cost of IT support is for SMEs to turn to a vendor that offers an SOE-like service. I would love to know how SME readers feel about having IT sales people dictate the technology they should use to access reduced price services.
The way I see it is that we choose to run our own businesses, so we have the freedom of choice and can run with flexible systems. Yet we are limited in the systems we can afford to support. There is a fierce battle between productivity and creativity that is leaving SMEs struggling with the cost of technology.
So, what can we do to maximise total cost of ownership (TCO) without locking ourselves down too much?
The answer is to standardise as much as possible, across as many PCs and businesses as possible. We do this by minimising both the brands of technology we sell to clients, and the models of device within the brand. We build our computers from scripts that produce standard results in minimum time, and try to reduce the number of operating systems in use. To do so, it’s important to keep devices up-to-date and move clients to new operating systems as soon as they prove to be stable enough to ensure longevity of the platform. We also introduce usage policies to minimise risk and variation.
We then document solutions to problems as we resolve them, keeping a knowledge base of problem resolutions. To have level one staff resolve problems quickly, we give them access to the store of proven solutions as level one staff lack the time to do the research required to find a new solution on the fly. They may also not yet have the skills to develop a solution on their own.
Of course, building the standards and knowledge base requires internal infrastructure, applications and human resources which come at a high cost, and so becomes part of the scalability issue of a support business. You can’t build the knowledge or the structure until you have scale, and you can’t grow further until you have the productivity. This forms part of the challenge for internal IT departments in rapidly growing SMEs.
It is this scalability issue that causes relatively small companies with four or five IT staff to work very inefficiently. Essentially, they never built the productivity tools. A couple of hundred computers did not create the scale that justified the building of the systems and so the work grew. By the time we reach 300 PCs, the SOEs and systems really start to make sense. So it is common to see lower head counts per PC supported in large companies than in the medium companies that failed to outsource or build knowledge bases and SOEs.
The key for SMEs is to partner with organisations that have the systems and the scale to have a quasi SOE in place that lets them work to a tight Service Level Agreement (SLA), and reduce the time that goes into solving each IT problem – thus driving down the TCO.
If you take anything from this article, make it this: It takes a lot of smarts to make complex systems simple and drive the cost of management down. Find an intelligent team that can make your life easier and cheaper by removing the impediments to growth caused by IT.
David Markus is the founder of Combo – the IT service company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth. We win awards for the service we offer, so If your IT environment is slowing you down, contact Combo on 1300 726 626 to organise a complimentary consultation with David.
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