Almost Two-Thirds of IT Decision Makers Say Service Desk Should be at Front-line of IT Operations

08-Sep-2011

New poll by Service Management and IT Operations specialist, Fusion Business Solutions shows service-focused performance metrics could affect potential to meet crucial cost-reduction targets.

London, UK – XX September 2011: A new survey from the Service Management and IT Operations Specialist and BMC partner, Fusion Business Solutions has been released showing IT decision makers firmly believe the service desk has an important role at the forefront of IT operations. 

63 per cent of those polled in the YouGov survey, which comprised of 104 UK-based IT decision makers in enterprise-sized organisations (1000+ employees), agreed that the service desk should be the front-end and co-ordinator of all IT requests. 

While perhaps unsurprisingly, reducing costs was cited by 69 per cent of respondents as a priority for service management and IT operations in the next year, service desk performance was shown to be benchmarked predominantly against service-based targets such as agreed service level agreements (58%), percentages of issues resolved on first contact (55%) and overall level of customer satisfaction (45%). Just 23 per cent said they evaluated against total cost per supported user. 

“Most IT managers we surveyed told us that cutting costs in Service Management and IT Operations is a top overall priority, yet only 23 per cent are using this as a measure of performance on the service desk,” says Fusion Business Solutions CEO, Mark Lyttle. 

“What this shows is that while cost reduction is a priority for the IT department, for the service desk preferred performance measures remain focused on service level agreements and customer satisfaction - and not on direct cost reduction measures.”

“The service desk is a big cost centre in the IT department and while service is important, performance measures that are focussed on efficiency and productivity are needed to ensure alignment with the rest of the IT department and help managers drive improvements”

When asked to identify the single biggest perceived obstacle to the IT department achieving its priorities in the coming year, 30 per cent identified not having enough time and human support or skilled internal resource as being a major problem.

“To get the maximum return on their IT investments and achieve critical savings, we believe it is important to concentrate on making processes more efficient within the IT operations department, not just implementing new software but this is being hampered by a lack of time / internal resources,” added Mark Lyttle. 

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All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 104 middle managers or above, with IT decision making roles in organisations with 1000+ employees. Fieldwork was undertaken between 18th - 19th July 2011. The survey was carried out online.