One Comment on “Which of the following are Service Desk organizational structures?”

1. Michael McNeil says:

   May 30, 2014 at 7:17 pm

   6.2.3 Service Desk organizational structure
   There are many ways of structuring Service Desks and
   locating them – and the correct solution will vary for
   different organizations. The primary options are detailed
   below, but in reality an organization may need to
   implement a structure that combines a number of these
   options in order to fully meet the business needs:
   6.2.3.1 Local Service Desk
   This is where a desk is co-located within or physically
   close to the user community it serves. This often aids
   communication and gives a clearly visible presence, which
   some users like, but can often be inefficient and expensive
   to resource as staff are tied up waiting to deal with
   incidents when the volume and arrival rate of calls may
   not justify this.
   There may, however, be some valid reasons for
   maintaining a local desk, even where call volumes alone
   do not justify this. Reasons might include:
   ■ Language and cultural or political differences
   ■ Different time zones
   ■ Specialized groups of users
   ■ The existence of customized or specialized services
   that require specialist knowledge
   ■ VIP/criticality status of users.
   6.2.3.2 Centralized Service Desk
   It is possible to reduce the number of Service Desks by
   merging them into a single location (or into a smaller
   number of locations) by drawing the staff into one or
   more centralized Service Desk structures. This can be more
   efficient and cost-effective, allowing fewer overall staff to
   deal with a higher volume of calls, and can also lead to
   higher skill levels through great familiarization through
   more frequent occurrence of events. It might still be
   necessary to maintain some form of ‘local presence’ to
   handle physical support requirements, but such staff can
   be controlled and deployed from the central desk.
   6.2.3.3 Virtual Service Desk
   Through the use of technology, particularly the Internet,
   and the use of corporate support tools, it is possible to
   give the impression of a single, centralized Service Desk
   when in fact the personnel may be spread or located in
   any number or type of geographical or structural locations.
   This brings in the option of ‘home working’, secondary
   support group, off-shoring or outsourcing – or any
   combination necessary to meet user demand. It is
   important to note, however, that safeguards are needed in
   all of these circumstances to ensure consistency and
   uniformity in service quality and cultural terms.
   6.2.3.4 Follow the Sun
   Some global or international organizations may wish to
   combine two or more of their geographically dispersed
   Service Desks to provide a 24-hour follow-the-sun service.
   For example, a Service Desk in Asia-Pacific may handle
   calls during its standard office hours and at the end of this
   period it may hand over responsibility for any open
   incidents to a European-based desk. That desk will handle
   these calls alongside its own incidents during its standard
   day and then hand over to a USA-based desk – which
   finally hands back responsibility to the Asia-Pacific desk to
   complete the cycle.
   This can give 24-hour coverage at relatively low cost, as
   no desk has to work more than a single shift. However,
   the same safeguards of common processes, tools, shared
   database of information and culture must be addressed for
   this approach to proceed – and well-controlled escalation
   and handover processes are needed.
   6.2.3.5 Specialized Service Desk groups
   For some organizations it might be beneficial to create
   ‘specialist groups’ within the overall Service Desk structure,
   so that incidents relating to a particular IT service can be
   routed directly (normally via telephony selection or a webbased
   interface) to the specialist group. This can allow
   faster resolution of these incidents, through greater
   familiarity and specialist training.
   The selection would be made using a script along the
   lines of ‘If your call is about the X Service, please press 1
   now, otherwise please hold for a Service Desk analyst’.
   Care is needed not to over complicate the selection, so
   specialist groups should only be considered for a very
   small number of key services where these exist, and
   where call rates about that service justify a separate
   specialist group.