Why Does Your Organization Need to Implement IT Service Desk?

Core Functions of IT Service Desk

IT service desk is the operating arm of IT department in organization. It handles everything from individual technical problems to sweeping system outages and provides a single point of contact for all users of IT service provider. The responsibilities of IT service desk are revolved around the role of service desk in incident management and request fulfilment along with communications.

The service desk owns the incident management process and is responsible for resolving incidents according to service level agreements with the goal to restore services as quickly as possible and it handles the IT service requests from users such as resetting their password or installing software to their computers. The IT service desk ensures that users have a place to look for the most basic IT service problems that they could not solve on their own.

Main Features of IT Service Desk Software

As discussed previously, IT service desk has multi-purpose roles and in order to fulfil these roles, organizations need a range of applications or software that expand beyond traditional tech support and management. In addition, there are several features that shall be owned by an IT service desk software.

First, ticket management. This feature enables faster resolution by creating automatic prioritization, assignment, as well as monitoring incidents and issues from different channels. Then, SLA management. It is a feature that helps IT service desk prioritize tickets based on SLAs and determine whether escalation or deadlines should define management rules. The next feature is called task, problem, asset, release, contract, and change management. It organizes tasks and issues to promote collaboration, minimize disruptions, and ensure smooth transitions & product releases.

Moreover, service catalogue becomes one of the features of IT service desk software that centralized detail location of available service to different business units. It also provides a form where users can submit a ticket. Lastly, automation and analytics. These features could help IT service desk ensures that tasks are always performed to completion and all relevant data regarding the tasks are collected and studied to generate actionable insights which later improve service desk performance and results.

Conclusion

IT service desk is the operating arm of IT department in organization. It provides a single point of contact for all users of IT service provider. Service desk responsibilities include logging, upgrading and closing incidents (unplanned interruptions to IT services), answering questions, informing users about service status, and managing the incident and request lifecycle.

Reference:

Bober, P. (2014). Simulation for IT service desk improvement. Quality Innovation Prosperity, 18(1), 47-58.

Cherwell Software. (n.d.). What Are the Primary IT Service Desk Responsibilities? Retrieved July 9, 2021, from https://www.cherwell.com/it-service-management/library/blog/it-service-desk-responsibilities/

SysAid - ITSM Solutions. (2021, June 17). What is a Service Desk? | Key Benefits of an IT Service Desk. SysAid. https://www.sysaid.com/resources/what-is-an-it-service-desk