Research Report - End-User:
The Aging Help Desk: Migrating to a Modern Service Desk

Date: 04/22/2009

Length: 39 pages

Cost: $795.00

Abstract:
The help desk that first arrived on the scene nearly 20 years ago has been redefined. No longer is its role to simply record and respond to user issues that arise with technology. While that responsibility continues to persist, the help desk’s role has continuously expanded as it naturally has a place in many IT management activities. Today, it serves as the “hub” for service management activities that reach out to most Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) domains such as asset management, configuration management systems, change management, knowledge management, the service catalog and more. The help/service desk commonly serves as the most logical starting place for corporate best practice initiatives.

For this study, EMA surveyed 158 IT professionals with help/service desk responsibility and familiarity with their organization’s ITSM initiatives to explore the evolution of the help desk to the service desk. This quantitative data was complemented by 14 in-depth telephone interviews. Even in this down economy, companies are looking at the help/service desk as a place where investments can be made with many different types of returns. This investment does not always take the form of product replacements. Instead, monetary gains can be achieved through more effective use of staff, reduction in the number of operations that are in place, more strategic approach to software deployments, etc. User priorities and goals were assessed in this research along with operational elements such as metrics that would help IT to improve the quality and credibility of its operation.