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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.”