What's Up at the Help Desk

Executive Summary: Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices are influencing the market for Help desk software solutions. Help desk software is increasingly service oriented with self-service options and knowledge management features. Microsoft is entering the Help desk software market with System Center Service Manager.

For better or for worse, how users view the Help desk is how they view your IT department: It's the first point of contact for end users and customers interacting with IT. Maybe your organization realizes this and is making the Help desk more service oriented. Or maybe your organization is still at the stage of "let's give the tech's cell phones and a spreadsheet and call it good." Or, as one Help desk software solution manager put it, maybe you're still at "the sticky note stage." Whatever stage your organization is at, you might be affected by what's happening in the Help desk solution industry, especially with Microsoft entering the market. Forces such as the move to standardize best practices are influencing not only what Microsoft has planned but also what many other Help desk software vendors are offering.

With the help of industry insiders working at various Help desk solution companies, I was able to take the pulse of the Help desk industry today, glimpse the growing movement toward incorporating best practices in service desk management, and scout possible future changes. I also got a sense of what it means for Microsoft to be entering the picture. You might also be interested in some advice I heard about how to approach purchasing Help desk software and what features your fellow IT pros are asking for.

This Isn't Your Father's Help Desk
Help desks began as a group of the most knowledgeable people in the IT department working phones and taking user questions. The goal was to close out a ticket as fast as possible, and the work was largely reactive. Now Help desks have scattered worldwide, gone offshore, and moved to the Web. Operating within tight budgets and stringent staffing levels, Help desks still manage to deal with a huge number of user problems. According to a study released by SupportSoft, a provider of automated solutions to technology problems, the top five user issues are forgotten passwords (now that's a surprise!), and problems with systems, enterprise software, connectivity, and email. Additional issues include user complaints about slow computers, printer problems, and the problems raised when businesses deploy new software, such as Windows Vista.

So what's an organization to do? Most turn to a software provider for a solution. As Ryan Terrell of GWI Software put it, Help desk software "is not a fun thing to buy. It's not one of those neat new technologies. "Numara Software's David Weiss added, "It's not an impulse buy—usually it's a result of someone concluding ‘I've dealt with the chaos long enough—I need a way to deal with problems.'" Help desk software providers have found ways to free Help desk personnel from the endless round of reactive work answering calls and resolving tickets, to approach Help desk issues more proactively. This move toward proactive resolution has in part been prompted by a set of standardized best practices formulated in the UK, known as Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).

Why Should I Care About ITIL?
As long as your Help desk functions properly, you might not know or care about international standards for Help desk best practices, but these standards are influencing Help desk software features and the terminology that describes them. Set forth in multiple volumes, ITIL standards are affecting how organizations deal with Help desk problems, how they choose Help desk software, and what features software providers are offering.

ITIL is a framework of best practices, not a step-by-step how-to of Help desk methods. ITIL standardizes the terminology and best practices of services a "service desk" delivers to its end users or "customers" using these main categories:

• Incident management—how you respond to and communicate with customers.
• Problem management—how you find root causes of problems and create and document solutions.
• Change management—how you decide which problems should be fixed, in what order, and by whom.
• Configuration management—how you manage all the parts and relationships in your IT infrastructure.
• Release management—how you roll out new software and hardware.

Kevin Auger of LANDesk said ITIL influenced LANDesk's Service Desk offering: "ITIL has defined some very good concepts that can improve a business from an efficiency and governance standpoint." LANDesk's strategy is to promote ITIL in a practical way, he said.

BMC Software's Gerry Roy said, "We've been hearing about ITIL for a long time, especially over in Europe. It's taken a while for awareness to grow in the States. It's not so much that a product is ITIL-verified or ITILcompliant—what's important is that a product will help you implement ITIL."

Numara's Weiss said, "Whether it's ingrained behavior or a written spec, the idea of ITIL is good. The spec is leading the process, but the behavior will change ultimately." He added that ITIL helps foster a service mindset.

One offshoot of this service mindset is the concept of self-service. ITIL emphasizes giving people the ability to help themselves. Most Help desk software solutions now offer a knowledge base to end users. Instead of waiting for a ticket to be resolved, users can search for known solutions to their problems and learn how to implement them.

"Incident volume is going up on a daily basis, but you can't increase staff. The solution is self-service and automation of processes. You create a catalog [of tasks] at the front end; a catalog curtails what users can do—we're conditioned to order what's on the menu. Then you automate the back end to do it. Customers definitely want both, because they can't increase their budget or their staff. We're trying to put as much at the end users' fingertips as possible," said BMC's Roy.

LANDesk's Auger said, "We license a knowledge base engine where customers can put their own content, and it aggregates problems and information, too. A good knowledge base expands and grows and lets customers have input."

"People know the core components, but they're not educated on every book of ITIL," said Terrell of GWI Software. "People are looking for the components they understand, such as incident management. For the midmarket, [when you mention] configuration management, you get a glossed-over gaze. And change management is often seen as a process for requesting change, as opposed to documenting and making changes."

Incident management is important to IssueTrak's customers, whether they're trying to be ITIL-compliant or just run an efficient Help desk, said Hank Luhring. "The better you can handle incident management, the better you can be proactive; it sets up a self-supporting cycle."

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