Justifying a Help Desk, Customer Service : iPedia

In economics, business is the social science of managing people to organize and maintain collective productivity toward accomplishing particular creative and productive goals, usually to generate revenue.

The etymology of "business" refers to the state of being busy, in the context of the individual as well as the community or society. In other words, to be busy is to be doing commercially viable and profitable work.
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What the people upstairs seem to forget is that without proper equipment, software and competent support staff, the back bone of the company could very well crumble.

Computer software (or simply software) is the programs and procedures that enable a computer to perform a specific task, as opposed to the physical components of the system (hardware). This includes application software such as a word processor, which enables a user to perform a task, and system software such as an operating system, which enables other software to run properly, by interfacing with hardware and with other software.
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Budget generally refers to a list of all planned expenses and revenues. A budget is an important concept in microeconomics, which uses a budget line to illustrate the trade-offs between two or more goods. A personal budget is among the most important concepts of personal finance. In a personal or family budget all sources of income (inflows) are identified and expenses (outflows) are planned with the intent of matching outflows to inflows. There are a wide variety of personal budgeting methods and tools that can be employed to help individuals and families with the budgeting process.
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It costs money when a program stops working and an employee stares at that blank screen for half an hour. It’ll cost even more if no one knows how to fix it. It’s very frustrating for people to wait hours on end to get someone to look at their problem. What a waste of time, money and productivity!

No matter how good the warranty is, at some point, the equipment needs replacing or fixing and at one point – which lets face it happens more often then not – you need competent people to come and help. That alone should justify the cost of your help desk.

Take a moment to analyse what your company is already spending for the following items – the ones that you won’t see on any statement:

o Time lost waiting on-hold for a customer support officer. o Time spent reading the product manual.

If you think that all these items only occur once in a while and that your staff are resourceful enough to find a solution on their own, think again. The same problem could reoccur time and time again and be fixed time and time again by different people not knowing that it’s happened before. If your staff member can’t fix his/her problem on his/her own, they call someone else to help him or her. That someone else stops what they’re doing and takes an hour trying to fix the problem but can’t. They call another one, and another one. See where I’m going?

Every office has a knowledgeable person that learnt a particular software application or is naturally inclined to technology. That person is often called to help out in the situation mentioned above. And every time this person stops what they’re doing to go and help, they stop being productive at their job. Even worse, if this employee happens to be a high-paid specialist, then the company is throwing away dollars out the window when they could employ a cheaper and trained resource to deliver support.

Worse still, in some instances, when your help desk department is so short staffed that your customers are by-passing the official support people and asking the specialist for help, the company is still losing money!

Start with the obvious: The salaries, cost of training your support staff, computer

A computer is a machine for manipulating data according to a list of instructions known as a program.

Computers are extremely versatile. In fact, they are universal information-processing machines. According to the Church–Turing thesis, a computer with a certain minimum threshold capability is in principle capable of performing the tasks of any other computer, from those of a personal digital assistant to a supercomputer, as long as time and memory capacity are not considerations. Therefore, the same computer designs may be adapted for tasks ranging from processing company payrolls...
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This is the most efficient way to track what your department is doing, how it spends its budget and what resources need to be considered when the next budget comes around. This software must have the ability to create analysis reports on, the level of urgency of the calls, what type of problems are logged and how long it takes to resolve the problems. If you present this important

Hardware is the general term that is used to describe physical artifacts of a technology.

It can be equipment such as fasteners, keys, locks, hinges, latches, corners, handles, wire, chains, plumbing supplies, tools, utensils, cutlery and machine parts, especially when they are made of metal. In the United States, hardware has been traditionally sold in "hardware stores".
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Basically, when it comes time to determine if you need a support department, think of how you couldn’t afford not to. Computers will crash, people will need support on different software programs, and your employees/customers will need someone to help them with their problems. Having properly trained support staff makes a big difference when we think of a company’s productivity. Without them, so much time and money would be wasted.

Paul Smith is the manager of Auratech Software, a company that specialises in Help Desk Software to help businesses with their customer support. If you would like to read more articles on improving your support or would like to check out Auratech’s range of Help Desk Software, please visit: http://www.helpdesk-support.com/better-support.htm

Information as a concept bears a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation.

Many people speak about the Information Age as the advent of the Knowledge Age [citation needed] or knowledge society, the information society, and information technologies, and even though information science and computer
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Justifying a Help Desk

It seems that every time businesses decide to cut down on expenses, they always seem to focus on the Help Desk/IT department. IT Managers are very often asked to work with outdated software, understaffing and an ever- increasing backlog of calls and angry customers.

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