Example of Best Practices - How to reduce a budget for informatics and telecom Help Desk

How to reduce the help desk throughput (number of calls, number of interventions)

1. Minimize the number of technological units
2. Minimize the level of use of technological units (recommend/require alternative methods)
3. Favouring technological units with few break-downs
4. Favouring technological units which can be services on distance by the provider or by an internal relay in order to minimize the need for intervening on location.
5. Setting up a system of preventive maintenance of technological units (by internal agents, isolated users or with support from Keys Users, by specialized companies or, for the screens, keyboards, and printers, by enlarging the contracts with maintenance companies taking care of offices etc.).
6. Assure that the real use of a technological unit corresponds to the use recommended by the provider to reduce the functional need of not-standard use.
7. Identify the calls which can be satisfied by an improvement of the users' knowhow in order to avoid the help desk calls. Identify the necessary know-how, capitalize it and make it available for the end-users or through a Key User.

How to reduce the help desk cost

1. Make the real use of a technological unit correspond to the use recommended by the provider, in order to be able to, when negociating with the provider, ask him to give all the usual guarantees for normal use of the units.
2. Favouring technological units which can be services on distance by the provider or by an internal relay in order to minimize the need for intervening on location.
3. Negotiating a fixed price for the assistance for each technological unit, allowing to budget the assistance (or help desk) cost. This budget is fixed notwithstanding the number of of interventions which happen during the year. (It is thus necessary to have supervising indicators to be able to evaluate if the user satisfaction is maintained - since the provider has an interest, because of the fixed budget, in minimizing the help desk costs even if it means diminishing the user satisfaction).
4. Setting up a charging (to each division / user) of the costs running the technological units, in order to urge a moderate use of the units.
5. Setting up a charging (to each division / user) of the help desk costs, in order to urge a moderate use of the help desk.

These Bests Practices are used:

• to allow benchmarking along companies of similar size, in the same sectors or sharing the same trans-sectorial needs,
• to get the optimum benefit from the available know-how,
• to integrate the day-to-day experiences accumulated by consultants from BusinessLine.