Distributed Support Services - Stretching Your IT Team’s Abilities
When you have offices that are located at multiple locations across various locations, delivering IT support is a challenge. You may opt to use a local IT company. The disadvantages of this are the expense levels, having assistance only in the one language and the need for several providers, one at each place with a need. One other way could be to recruit a local specialist or a local recruiting organisation. In this situation, you will have to deal with all the associated costs and effort in hiring, legal obligations such as IR35 and specific regional regulations. Furthermore, specialist rates are high and several professionals will be needed for several places.
Another option would be to fly your IT assistance experts from their main office to offer their on-site support. If this is the direction you opt, you will have the additional expenses of the journey and stay. Service level agreements will have to be on the higher side as they will need to take into account journey time and even an immediate need such as having a server down will have to wait until your person is able to come to the location. Also, there may be communication problems if the individual sent is not multi-lingual.
Another choice you can make is to provide the support remotely. The disadvantage here is that if there is a need for any support that cannot be done from a remote location, you cannot offer the needed assistance. There is no question that not all significant problems can be handled from afar. One more remedy would be to employ a professional at each place however you may find that their time is not being utilised fully. All the obligations that go with employing someone on a full time basis will have to be dealt with and you will still face the challenge of little flexibility in the skills available.
A better option than the expensive one of utilising a full time professional in a small office would be to have a resource working there part-time and hence right-sizing your resources. All your full and part time professionals will report to a centralised helpdesk to ensure proper organisation of their time. This kind of support is known as ‘Distributed Support’.
This is a rather exclusive method for IT assistance at several places. It can be separated into 2 independent areas – Seat or Feet! ‘Seat’ relates your central IT help desk that has experts who remotely fix issues; they could be in one site or distributed across several sites. ‘Feet’ represents experts who are actually available at the various client workplaces and offer assistance as appropriate. IMAC, project roll-outs, hardware/software, warranty, LAN and server assistance are all areas that are a part of the support provided.
The ideal solution would be to work with a supplier who gives you professionals who are multi-lingual, that is, proficient in the local language and English. It will be easier for you to handle as you will have only one provider for all places resulting in a significant decrease in administration of suppliers. It will help you provide consistent service across locations as you will have only one set of SLA’s with the service provider. Since the professionals are employees of your partner, you will not have all the hassle and liabilities that go with recruiting and training an employee. The outcome will be that you will have a smooth management framework which is clear and understandable, versatile assistance as needed, either full time or part-time and pan-European, local or international options which are designed to each customer's specific requirements. You will also get maximum utilisation of your IT resources and lower your expenditure in the bargain.