How do you know if your IT service desk is successful? How do you know if (and where) you need improvement? What inputs do you need to make sound decisions? It all comes down to data.
The numbers, graphs, and stories contained within data enable us to make better decisions, understand where we can improve, and verify when we have accomplished tasks or made those improvements.
When managing a team, especially in a field like IT, data becomes critical to many of your responsibilities. How effective was the support team over the past month? Were major disruptions caused by one system or a few? Evaluations and assessments of most IT teams or their service providers start with data:
- How long do users wait on-hold?
- What is the average speed to answer for the Level 1 team?
- How many tickets were created last quarter? What % change is that over last quarter or year?
- How many tickets were resolved by the Level 1 and Level 2 teams last month?
- What was the uptime for the organization’s systems?
- How many tickets are still waiting for troubleshooting and resolution at the end of each day?
IT teams can get bogged down with trying to keep security high, disruptions low, and the environment stable. That leaves little time for collecting, analyzing, and utilizing their data. However, as noted above, this data remains critical to fulfilling IT roles and responsibilities.
Measuring these KPI’s provides the insight that will allow your IT Management Team to:
- Recognize trends
- Identify areas of need for hardware, software, and training
- Adjust staffing levels, achieving higher utilization and quality of work-life for technicians
- Measure end-user satisfaction
- Balance workloads so your most highly skilled engineers aren’t spending their days resetting passwords
Regular reporting is especially important when working with outside service providers. Not only to show that Service Level Agreements are being met, but as a tool for the organization to use for improvement.
Reporting enables IT teams to better manage and evaluate providers. Monthly reports should be rolled up into quarterly reviews that review trends and verify improvements. Annual reports ensure that the service desk has achieved goals and is set to support strategic objectives.
In future blogs, we’ll explore these reports in more detail.