Benefits of IT Help Desk

Using Cloud Computing

By Neil Zawacki
Updated: May 09, 2012

Many small businesses wonder if they should have an IT help desk or just rely on tech-savvy individuals to solve problems. The answer typically depends on the size of the company, and there are reasons to consider each.

Here are some of the advantages of an IT help desk:

1) It’s a single place to report issues

The IT help desk provides a centralized location to deal with technical issues. Employees don’t have to wonder if they should call a particular engineer or programmer or member of the support team. They simply dial the IT help desk with the knowledge that they are trained to handle complex problems.

2) Ticket generation

An IT help desk can make sure that issues are handled in the order they are received by generating tickets for employees. This also provides a time frame for when the problem should be resolved – if there’s just two other tickets for the help desk to deal with, the employee will know the IT staff will be coming by soon.

3) It provides a systematic approach

The staff of an IT help desk can be trained on a common set of procedures. This provides a systematic approach for when they have to handle technical issues – they’ll start with the most common solution, and move on from there. This tends to solve problems much better than trying out different things at random to see if they work.

4) Historical logs

The IT help desk can create a historical log of all the different problems they encounter at the company. This documentation can then be used as a reference point if the issue should pop up again, since they’ll know how the problem was resolved. Historical logs are also useful if an employee is having an ongoing problem and needs to contact the IT department multiple times to settle the issue.

5) Proactive prevention

The IT help desk can use the information they gather on a daily basis to run performance reports. These can then show which computer systems and pieces of hardware are consistently experiencing bottleneck issues. The company can then be proactive about replacing them (provided it’s within the budget) and not have to worry about the system suddenly going at an inopportune time.

6) Performance surveys

It can often be difficult to accurately judge job performance. An IT help desk can manage this issue by sending out automatic surveys after an issue is concluded. If the IT staff took too long to solve the problem or behaved in an unprofessional manner, the survey will reflect that.