+1 on the part about quantifying time spent. My org is laying people of and scaling back hours due to massive budget cuts. I've stressed to my technicians that it's imperative that they document how and where their time is spent so that we have no problem justifying their positions.
As for users self-servicing... Well, I truly believe that in my environment the percentage of users who would do it is in the single digits. So in our case, it probably wouldn't be worthwhile to invest too much time in creating and maintaining a system for it. John Hornbuckle MIS Department Taylor County School District 318 North Clark Street Perry, FL 32347 www.taylor.k12.fl.us -----Original Message----- From: Steven Peck [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 1:58 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Help Desk Software So, a comment on the folks who are still using 'paper and pencil' tracking. Implementing some sort of help desk system that you can log and track calls is a pain. A huge time distracting pain. However, it can and will be beneficial in these economic times. So, "IT department, what value do you provide?" If you track your calls, all your calls, you can provide numbers. Management likes numbers. Depending on how you categorize your calls you can also determine what areas are your biggest time sinks and focus improvements there. Sometimes you can determine and document 'who' are your biggest time sinks and draw attention or provide more training there as well. While the stereotype mantra is 'no one reads documentation', I find that isn't actually true. If you can provide a consistent place for people to find it, and make sure it is maintained as part of any new software upgrade / roll out to the user community, then it will help reduce calls. There are and always will be those who will not avail themselves of this resource and depending on your companies culture may be something you have to live with, but by having the documentation available, you will at least have a starting point for users to check when you are not available. Steven ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
