Build a Right-Sized Service Desk for Small Enterprise
Keep sustainability front of mind to develop a service desk that suits your needs.
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Contributors
- Kevin Vigil, Director of IT, Southwest CARE Center
- Small
enterprises with constrained resources should design a service desk that
optimizes the use of standardized processes and leverages self-service tools.
- Speak with one of our expert analysts to align your service desk with organizational needs, identify high-priority efforts that address service gaps, and right-size best practices to fit within your staffing and capacity constraints.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Don’t over-complicate the service desk. Adopt a set of processes that match your organization’s maturity and focus on service effectiveness and timeliness.
Impact and Result
- Demonstrate value with metrics and reports that track performance.
- Decide on a service desk model that is tailored to meet the needs of your organization.
- Build incident and request processes to improve the effectiveness and timeliness of the service desk.
- Promote knowledge sharing and empower end users to address issues on their own.
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should build a right-sized service desk, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.
1. Assess the current state of the service desk
Use the activities in this section to collect end-user feedback and identify service gaps.
2. Design and build a right-sized service desk for SE
Use the activities in this section to implement new service desk structures, frameworks, and processes.
3. Communicate and teach service desk best practices
Use the activities in this section to foster knowledge sharing and cross-organizational collaboration.
Guided Implementations
This guided implementation is a six call advisory process.
Guided Implementation #1 - Plan a strategy
Call #1 - Review the results of the service desk diagnostics
Call #2 - Develop a service desk strategy
Guided Implementation #2 - Design an action plan
Call #1 - Discuss service desk staffing and skills gaps; define service desk roles, responsibilities, and decision rights
Call #2 - Develop sustainable incident, request, and knowledge management processes
Guided Implementation #3 - Execute the action plan
Call #1 - Define requirements for an affordable service desk solution
Call #2 - Review the standard operating procedure document and service desk roadmap
Book Your Workshop
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Lay Service Desk Foundations
The Purpose
- Conduct a current state assessment of the existing service desk.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Assess the process maturity, structure, staffing, and key metrics of the existing service desk, and determine your target state.
Activities
Outputs
Outline service desk challenges.
- Service desk challenges
Review diagnostics results.
- Diagnostics results
Review current state assessment.
- Current state assessment
Review service desk structure and staffing
- Service desk structure and staffing
Create a RACI chart to review accountabilities.
- RACI chart and skills gap analysis
List IT service support roles.
- Service desk roles
Review current task allocations.
- Service desk responsibilities
Create a list of required reports and metrics.
- Service desk metrics and reports, and balanced scorecard
Module 2: Design Incident Management
The Purpose
- Conduct a health check on incident management processes, improve the key elements, and align them to best practices.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Develop workflows for incident and critical incident management processes, and develop guidelines for ticket handling, categorization, prioritization, and escalation.
Activities
Outputs
Review incident management challenges.
- Incident management challenges
Define incident management workflows.
- Incident management workflow
Define critical incident management workflow.
- Critical incident management workflow
Design critical incident communication plan.
- Critical incident management communication plan
Identify opportunities to automate ticket creation.
- List of ticket templates
Identify opportunities to reduce recurring tickets.
- List of recurring tickets
Assess ticket categorization.
- Enhanced ticket categorization scheme
Enhance ticket classifications with resolution codes.
- Ticket resolution and status codes
Build a small number of rules to facilitate prioritization.
- Enhanced ticket prioritization scheme
Define escalation rules.
- Escalation guidelines
Define automated escalations.
- List of automatic escalations
Module 3: Design Request Fulfillment
The Purpose
- Conduct a health check on service request fulfillment, improve its key elements, and align them to best practices.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Develop workflows for service request fulfillment, prepare for a service catalog project, and put in place a process to build and maintain a knowledgebase targeted on your most important tickets.
Activities
Outputs
Define service requests with SLAs.
- List of service requests
Build and critique request workflows.
- Service request workflows and estimated SLAs
Distinguish between requests and small projects.
- Criteria to distinguish between requests and projects
Review service definition checklist for standardized request models.
- Service request models for the service catalog
Develop self-help tools for end users.
- List of self-help tools for end users
Design knowledge management processes.
- Knowledge management policy and process
Create actionable knowledgebase articles.
- Article template; knowledgebase writing strategies and exercises
Module 4: Plan the Implementation of the Service Desk
The Purpose
- Prepare to implement the service desk processes built in previous modules.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Compile requirements for service desk software, build a communication plan, and develop an implementation roadmap.
Activities
Outputs
Create a requirements list for the service desk tool.
- ITSM tool requirements
Investigate which tool best meets your needs.
- Vendor shortlist and vendor briefing script
Create the communication plan.
- Communication plan, executive presentation, and service desk SOP
Build an implementation roadmap.
- Service desk implementation roadmap
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this Blueprint, and what our clients have to say.
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Lane Council of Governments
Guided Implementation
10/10
$61,462
105
Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority
Guided Implementation
9/10
$4,000
5
AgeTech
Guided Implementation
6/10
$2,000
5