Ninety-two percent of respondents to a global survey reported seeing a benefit in integrating service desk to desktop management tools.
A
global survey of almost 850 IT professionals on service desk trends reveals
that 71 percent of small to midsize businesses do not consider the Information
Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) as a factor during the purchase of
their service desk tool, even though half indicated having adopted ITIL in some
form.
An
overwhelming majority, 92 percent, indicated they have either not adopted ITIL
at all or only use it as a guideline. Additionally, the survey-conducted by
Dimensional Research and commissioned by Dell Kace-showed SMBs prefer ease of
use to advanced features. Almost all reported integration of service desk with
a desktop management tool as beneficial, though most SMBs reported that they do
not have an integrated solution.
Service
desk (also commonly referred to as help desk) tools are seen as the face of the
IT organization by employees, and interactions and successes with a company's
service desk have become the primary manner that corporate IT is judged.
The
primary goal of the "Trends With Service Desk Tools: A Survey of IT
Professionals" study was to gather data about the current trends in service
desk solutions, particularly among SMBs. Although the majority of SMB
organizations strive to optimize their service desk by integrating with desktop
management, 71 percent feel cost factors or technical complexity has hampered
their ability to make the integration.
"Our
survey revealed IT departments believe they can achieve increased efficiencies by
integrating their service desks with other processes to rapidly provide
complete information about the endpoints they service," said Diane Hagglund,
senior research analyst for Dimensional Research and the study's author.
"Although most organizations see the value in integrating their service desk
solutions with other systems, few SMBs have been able to implement this
important integration."
SMBs
ranked ease of use higher than advanced features when asked to rank a list of
service desk features. Web-based interface was the highest ranked service desk
feature. Seventy-one percent of survey respondents reported that the reputation
of corporate IT is significantly impacted by service desk interactions, while 92
percent reported seeing a benefit in integrating service desk to desktop
management tools, with 71 percent stating the integration enables faster
time-to-resolution and 87 percent of SMBs surveyed reported they have not
completed this integration due to cost or technical factors.
"Our
latest research underscores what our customers already say about the importance
of the service desk to their overall business success," said Rob Meinhardt,
president and co-founder of Dell Kace. "IT organizations of all sizes are
continually graded on how well their -tech support' optimizes end-user
performance, and this research shows reputations are on the line here. The
integrated service desk and desktop management capabilities of Dell Kace
appliances offer both IT and end users better performance and faster time to
resolution, helping to save IT administrators' time and their organizations
money."
Nathan Eddy is Associate Editor, Midmarket, at eWEEK.com. Before joining eWEEK.com, Nate was a writer with ChannelWeb and he served as an editor at FierceMarkets. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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