InformationWeek

Systems Support: Scream Savers

Users are getting better technical help. Today's support centers use problem-management tools, multimedia, and E-mail to solve computer problems-and, in many cases, spot them before they occur.

By Bob Violino
Issue date: June 12, 1995

Y ou almost get the feeling that Chemical Bank's managers would like something to go wrong with the computers that power their branches and ATM machines. That would give them a chance to test the bank's new information technology support center: a combination of the latest in automated telecom, multimedia, expert systems, and problem-management software. Nearly complete, the support center will not only respond to problems such as network outages, but will also anticipate problems and take preventive action.

"The system is proactive," says Bill Healy, Chemical's VP of retail banking systems and operations in New York. "We'll know when there's a problem as soon as it's happening-even before."

Chemical is at the vanguard of a trend that's sweeping corporate America: empowering the traditional IT help desk to resolve more quickly-and even anticipate and avoid-problems inherent in client-server computing. (For a related story on the help desk click here)

The New Help Desk
The modern help desk-now commonly called the support center-is nothing like its predecessor. The old help desk, dating from the days when mainframes and dumb terminals dominated corporate comp uting, provided simple, telephone-based service from the data center. But today's support centers boast sophisticated problem-management software, automated computer-telecom systems, and multimedia capabilities. They're designed to support local and wide area networks, portable and remote computers, and complex client-server applications. They also keep detailed records of breakdowns and repairs to help prevent future problems. And they do everything with a minimal number of staffers.

"There's a dramatic rethinking of the traditional help desk," says Patrick Bultema, director and general manager of the Help Desk Institute in Colorado Springs, Colo., an association for IT support managers. "It has to be more efficient; people have to do more with less."

Adds Andy Fine, a partner at Livingston Consulting Group: "Everyone is moving in this direction, and everyone would like to be as far along as Chemical is." Livingston Consulting, based in West Orange, N.J., advises companies on reengineering their suppo rt organizations.

Fine says many organizations face a support crisis because they're not prepared to handle the multivendor, multiplatform nature of the client-server environment. "Most companies say they can solve 80% to 90% of the support calls that come in, but that leaves 10% to 20% that aren't resolved," he explains. "If the support center gets 3,000 calls a month, that's hundreds of calls that don't get resolved."

IT support issues have become so crucial that they grab the attention of top management like never before, says Al Starck, president of Hyperion Associates Inc., a Fredricksburg, Va., firm that helps companies develop support centers. "If the help desk isn't high enough in an organization, it can't command the respect or resources it needs," Starck says.

A survey from the Help Desk Institute bears that out. More than half of the support organizations surveyed said they reported directly to their company's senior information systems executive in 1994, up from about 37% two years earli er.

In addition, 12% of support organizations reported directly to a senior executive outside the IS group, up from just 4% two years earlier.

Calls For Help
The survey also showed that support centers get more calls for help, due to the move to distributed computing and client-server setups. More than 70% of respondents said calls for help are on the increase. More than half of the respondents cited use of new technology, and changes and upgrades in technology as the most likely reasons for an increase in call volumes.

As a result, the market for support-center tools is booming. U.S. sales of problem-management/resolution tools-the core of most modern centers-will grow by 54% this year to reach $245 million, predicts the Gartner Group Inc., a research firm in Stamford, Conn. For next year, Gartner expects sales to jump another 65% to $405 million.

Further, Gartner Group analysts doubt support-center sales will slow a nytime soon. "Managers are called on to support IT that's more pervasive in organizations, with the same or a smaller head count," says Carter Lusher, a Gartner Group VP and its research director. "They can't just throw bodies at the problem anymore."

The cost of upgrading an old-fashioned help desk ranges widely. A few thousand dollars buys a basic problem-management program. But a full-blown overhaul that includes the latest in expert systems, automatic call-distribution, and voice-recognition systems will cost several million dollars.

There's no shortage of vendors to supply those goods. Gartner's Lusher estimates that 170 companies supply the market, none with more than a 9% share. "You have to dig deep to figure out who makes the best products," he says.

There are a few guidelines, however. A good problem-management program, according to Lusher, should be scalable. It also should be based on a standard SQL relational database management system and include a client-server architecture that suppo rts various front and back ends. It should be able to hand off "trouble tickets," or service call sheets, from one person to another automatically if the first is unable to deal with the problem immediately. Good enterprise integration tools also should offer connectivity with telephony products, electronic mail, and network management systems, Lusher says.

The new support centers use many tools. In addition to problem-management and enterprise integration tools, there's technology such as E-mail, voicemail, automated call distribution, voice-response, and fax. These help automate the support centers so queries can be screened and directed better, ensuring more efficient use of the support staff. The Help Desk Institute's survey showed that nearly 80% of support centers used voicemail last year, up from 55% in 1992. Nearly half used automated call distribution, up from 36% two years earlier. And nearly 90% used E-mail, which wasn't even cited in the 1992 survey.

Watching It All
Ch emical Bank's new state-of-the-art support center in Melville, N.Y., will track ATM availability, branch security, communications systems, and all bank hardware and software from a single workstation. A large-screen monitor will provide extensive graphical "maps" of entire regions, so Chemical can determine whether a particular problem, such as a phone outage, is regionwide or limited to a single branch. "We can click on any branch and get a complete view," says Healy.

When calls for help come to the center, Healy says, a complete history of the device or software causing the trouble will automatically appear on-screen. That way, a fix can be issued much more quickly than in the past, when staffers had to search records manually. Satisfaction levels among users have "skyrocketed" since Chemical began upgrading its support center two years ago, says Walter Schiller, another Chemical VP.

Numerous vendors supply Chemical's support center, but the work of combining the various components has fallen to systems integrator Inet Corp. in Bethesda, Md. Though Healy declines to disclose how much Chemical has spent to develop the project to date, he says the bank will spend at least $500,000 on the support center this year. Chemical expects the center to save the bank about $2 million in operating expenses over the next three years.

Immense Leverge
In fact, the leverage these new-age support centers can provide can be immense. Stone Container Corp., a $4.1 billion paper company in Chicago, has a support center that lets just six people in a single center support some 5,000 users at 175 locations in the United States and Canada.

Stone uses Command/Post, a $60,000 product from Boole &Babbage Inc., a software vendor in San Jose, Calif. Command/Post manages multivendor PCs, networks, and applications. It also automatically gathers "alerts" from large systems, servers, PCs, and networking devices when they falter. Then, in conjun ction with another help-desk product, HelpQ from Quintus Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., Command/Post routes the alerts to the appropriate service personnel. "It's a nice, clean process," says Richard Antonini, Stone's manager of computer resources. "Now the people on the help desk are free to spend more time solving more complex problems. Everything the system knows about, it can handle on its own."

Antonini says that in the past, calls came in to a help desk equipped only with dumb terminals. The desk might be dedicated to mainframe problem-solving and thus be unfamiliar with other computing platforms. Now, "when a call comes in, any one of our people can resolve the problem," he says. "In some cases, we'll let the user know what went wrong so it doesn't happen again."

CSX Technology, the IS unit of CSX Corp., an $8.9 billion transportation company in Jacksonville, Fla., also relies on automation to help users. The company spent about $1.3 million to upgrade its support center, says Rocco Larizza, VP o f operations and technical services. And that allowed CSX to cut the support staff by 25%, he adds.

CSX uses a system incorporating IBM's NetView 6000 network-management platform, which is programmed to tell users how to perform such tasks as changing passwords without having to talk to a help agent. "We're doing everything we can to provide automated help so [users] can solve problems themselves as much as possible," says Larizza.

One of the system's most valuable features, Larizza adds, is its ability to keep detailed reports on what went wrong, how the problem was resolved, and how much time was needed. Already, reports have shown that the support center was receiving several hundred requests a day for terminal resets. CSX responded by developing a way for users to reset their own terminals rather than rely on support personnel. That saved five to eight minutes per incident, leaving the support staff freer for true emergencies.

"Tracking and maintaining statistics allows us to come up with better ways to improve support for our users," Larizza says. Still, only about 44% of companies use the support center to maintain statistics on response and repair times, according to the Help Desk Institute. Of those, about half get statistics exported from call-logging systems to analysis software, slightly more than 40% get data directly from call-logging systems, and just under 20% generate data manually from paper records.

That's proving costly. U.S. companies spend about $1 billion a year more than they need to on IT support, due to a lack of accurate information on the installed base, according to Greg Lewis, president of the Personal Computer Assets Management Institute in Rochester, N.Y. "If you don't have an accurate inventory of assets, your costs will be double what they should be," he says.

Build Your Own
Another way to save money is to build your own help-desk tools. Universal Corp., a $3 billion holding company i n Richmond, Va., developed a problem-tracking system for its five- person support center. The company logs every call regarding hardware and software incidents into a database. The goal: Determine whether a department or user's problem is recurring. "We're much better able to isolate and solve problems," says Sterling Baldwin, Universal's VP and chief information officer.

Other companies look to outside providers for help-desk services. McDonnell Douglas Corp., the $14.5 billion aerospace giant in St. Louis, has for the past 18 months relied on IBM for support as part of an outsourcing deal the companies signed in 1992. Integrated Systems Solutions Corp. (ISSC), IBM's services unit, provides McDonnell Douglas with a "Solution Center" that allows all of its computer users-about 30,000 people nationwide-to call a toll-free 800 number for virtually any type of computer-related problem and solution. The ISSC support service doesn't cost McDonnell anything above what it pays for the outsourcing service.

In the past, McDonnell Douglas handled help internally. Each unit had its own help staff, depending on which vendor's products it used. The result for McDonnell Douglas, which uses hardware and software from numerous vendors, was some 20 help desks in the St. Louis area alone. "Obviously, we needed a more cost-efficient solution," says Joe Deney, VP and general manager of IS.

McDonnell Douglas' solution center supports all the hardware and software the company uses, regardless of vendor. Asset-management software tracks such things as employee moves within the company's facilities.

End-users say they're pleased with the support. "They were very quick to respond to my request for help, then followed up to see how the service was," says Christine Nelson, a media specialist who works in McDonnell Douglas' communications department. This new emphasis on software that spots trouble before users do is spreading to other suppliers. "We're seeing our customers' [support centers] go from being telephone answerers to being more responsible for proactive service," says Jack Brown, senior director of distributed systems at Boole &Babbage.

Indeed, McDonnell Douglas' centralized help-desk approach is in vogue at many companies, according to PC Assets Management Institute's Lewis. "A lot of companies used to create a help desk every time they'd roll out 250 laptops," he says. "Now, they're trying to consolidate, but it's not easy. There are so many different types of machines, platforms, and software packages, it's almost impossible to find one person who's up to speed on all of it." The Help Desk Institute says nearly 60% of companies with support organizations that employ five to 15 people had a single, centralized support center in 1994, while 40% had two or more support centers. In 1996, 70% of those companies are expected to have a single support center, with only 29% having multiple centers.

A few companies are bucking the trend by building dedicated support centers for specific, revenue-generating business es. Chevron USA in San Francisco, for example, has developed a support service for its retail sales operations, covering the hardware, software, and communications products used for credit-card sales at gas stations.

Shaving Seconds
When calls come in to Chevron's support center from service stations nationwide, software provided by Tandem Computer Inc. automatically identifies the number that's calling and searches a database for a profile of the calling customer. This saves support center personnel at least 20 to 30 seconds per call, says Mike DeGennaro, coordinator of Chevron's Retail Automation Network support center.

With the help of automation, DeGennaro says, Chevron cut its retail support staff to 50 people from 88 two years ago. This, plus the reduced response time per call, saves Chevron an estimated $1.3 million a year in support costs.

Later this year, Chevron will invest as much as $60,000 in interactive voice-response technology to give its dealers the ability to "navigate" through a problem without the help of another person. In addition, the oil company will begin to fax complex instructions and diagrams to users, instead of incurring 20-minute explanations over the phone. Chevron dealers also will be able to do online searches for data to resolve some problems. Despite the urge to centralize, Help Desk Institute's Bultema expects more companies to align support centers with revenue-generating businesses, so the economic benefits of the center will be obvious to the upper management.

But some analysts say tracking the costs and benefits of support operations will remain tricky. "To actually prove you're getting a benefit is difficult," says Teresa Elms, a client-server analyst at Computer Economics Inc., a consulting firm in Carlsbad, Calif. "Most people see support as a cost center and not as a way to control costs. I think that will change. The further companies get into client-server, the more they will recognize that some of these solutions have value."

T here are other potential pitfalls to upgrading a support center, according to users and analysts. "There are so many call-management vendors and problem-management packages, you really have to determine what your objectives are and do a thorough analysis" before buying, says Paul Laingen, manager of the support center at Symbol Technologies Inc. in Bohemia, N.Y. "Otherwise, you can get boxed in with something that's not expandable or doesn't support the products you use."

Some organizations use such diverse hardware and software that no support center, no matter how sophisticated, will be able to support them all. "End users are often more in control of the dollars spent on IT, and they may use non-standardized products that aren't supported," says Computer Economics' Elms.

There's also the danger that outside support providers won't have the necessary firsthand experience with a particular vendor's products.

Still, as the true benefits of the modern support center become evident, companies will be m ore willing to invest in the latest technology to help users cope with problems. Then the move to client-server won't have to be a crisis.

Illustration: Cathie Bleck

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