InformationWeek

November 24, 1997

Help-Desk Functions Move To Intranets

Web-based tools let users help themselves, saving IS time and money

By Ch arles Waltner

ompanies are moving their traditional help-desk functions to corporate intranets. And why not? The tools to do so are increasingly plentiful. Over the last year, many of the 250 or so help-desk vendors have released a Web component to their products.

These offerings come none too soon for overtaxed corporate computing departments. Web-ready internal help-desk applications move many of the functions of technical support into users' hands. That relieves IS departments of growing service demands. It also saves companies significant time, money, and resources.

At the same time, intranet help desks address the growing challenge IS faces in serving users who are increasingly dispersed around the country and frequently on the road.

One vendor offering a Web help desk is Remedy Corp. in Mountain View, Calif., the leader in the internal help-desk business with nearly a quarter of the $325 million market (see chart, right). Other prominent vendors with Web versions include Allen Systems Group, Bendata, Magic Solutions, McAfee Associates, and Utopia Technology Partners.

Intranet help-desk offerings from these vendors are priced from $6,000 to $50,000, and vary considerably. Some have changed little from their previous versions, perhaps getting a simple HTML client interface slapped on. But others tap JavaScript, Java, and other technologies to handle both desktop client and back-office administrative functions.

Whatever the approach, intranet help desks are generating positive results for early users. Thomas Barthold, manager of the computing assistance center at Autodesk Inc., a San Rafael, Calif., software maker, figures he's saved 100 days of his staff's time over 18 months by putting Autodesk's help-desk applications up on the intranet.

Autodesk us es ARWeb, a companion product to Remedy's Action Request System client-server help-desk application. ARWeb lets 1,400 Autodesk employees served by Barthold's department find answers to their computing questions, submit repair orders, and modify existing orders-all through a Web browser.

Barthold concedes his department initially had difficulty weaning users off the telephone. His solution: Provide employees with incentives to use the Web to solve their computing problems. Barthold told Autodesk employees that service requests via the Web would have priority over queries made via telephone or E-mail-in fact, he made sure that his staff responded to all intranet-based orders within 30 seconds. "We showed users right up front that we would give them results," Barthold says.

It worked. Telephone calls to Barthold's group have dropped by more than 20%-and based on a study Barthold conducted, his staffers spend only 30 seconds processing a Web-based service request, compared with the 3 minutes, 19 seconds they needed to enter an order submitted via E-mail or phone. His department now receives most of its service requests over the company's intranet.

Payoff Time
The bottom line: Before deploying ARWeb, Autodesk had four technicians answering phones. Today, Barthold's department needs only one or two people staffing the lines. He calculates the savings in staff at 100 days a year at an average of $168 a day (or $21 an hour)-or roughly $16,800. That's more than the $16,000 it cost Autodesk to set up ARWeb-$12,000 for the product, $3,000 for a Sun Sparc workstation, and $1,000 in labor. Since return-on-investment calculations usually amortize costs, Barthold expects to show a savings in the first year.

His savings could be even greater in subsequent years. The system will already be installed and saving nearly $17,000; Barthold's biggest expense will be the $2,000 annual maintenance and update fee he'll pay to Remedy. "Every year I asked management for more and more staff because the complexity of computing problems kept increasing," he notes. "But with Remedy's Web product, my department didn't need any more help."

Self Help
Intranet help desks also help IS managers meet the growing challenge of serving an increasingly dispersed and mobile computing workforce. "It's getting tough to catch up to people in order to fix their machines," Barthold says. The Web provides employees with 24-hour access to computing support services, a handy feature for companies with offices in various time zones.

That accessibility has come in handy for Roger Hirsch, the help-desk supervisor for IXC Communications Inc., an Austin, Texas, fiber-optic network operator. He's implemented Support Magic//Web, a help-desk Web connectivity product from Magic Solutions. Hirsch says it's proven particularly convenient for employees who work late or on weekends. They can find technical answers to computing problems through a so-called "self-help" kn owledge bank database. They also have the option of submitting an order ticket, which will be waiting for help-desk staff when they return in the morning, he notes.

Work-Saver
Self-help knowledge banks are proving particularly useful for reducing IS department workloads. These features are usually a database residing on a central server that contains information about common computing problems. The features can be as simple as links to various documents to answer frequently asked questions or as complicated as a problem/solution relational database that processes natural language queries, such as SolutionExplorer from Primus Communications Corp. in Seattle. Self-help databases are especially effective at answering the most common and mundane questions from employees: Why won't my printer work? Why can't I find my file? Why won't my password grant me access to a network?

IXC's Hirsch says Support Magic//Web's self-help feature has reduced the total number of service requests to his departme nt by as much as 20%. That's because so many employees can solve most of their computer problems on their own. This function of Support Magic//Web, which costs about $12,000, has also pared telephone calls from IXC's 1,000 employees by an impressive half, Hirsch says. Estimated support savings: $45,000 a year in reduced support expenses, he adds. "The Web connection to the help desk frees us from being tied to the phone," he says. "It serves the function of having at least another support person on staff."

Help-desk intranets further reduce calls and IS administrative duties by letting employees monitor their requests for services. Rather than picking up the telephone to get updates, employees access information about their accounts via the Web. They can see what actions, if any, have been taken, what parts or services have been ordered by the IS department, and when they should expect completion of any repairs or installations. Also, if the hel p-desk staff has service-level agreements with different groups in a company, employees can check to see if they're meeting those contract stipulations.

One important side benefit: By turning many of the functions of the help desk over to employees via the Net, IS department personnel can spend more time tackling bigger projects. That's the case at Buena Vista Home Entertainment Inc. in Burbank, Calif. Using HeatLink, Bendata's Web product, employees in Buena Vista's IS department who previously spent all of their time answering telephones now take care of other administrative tasks, including many that have traditionally been handled by a higher-level manager. That manager, in turn, now has two more hours a day to take on other responsibilities. "Two hours a day may not seem like much, but you can get a lot done in that amount of time," says Allen Abrahamson, a senior IS analyst for Buena Vista.

Customers of the new help-desk products have few complaints. Abrahamson, for one, would like Bendata's Hea tLink to provide better search tools for its knowledge base and to brush up some of the interface cosmetics. Still, Abrahamson says he's been more than satisfied with the Web version of Bendata's product. "It definitely cuts down on calls, and saves time and money," he says. "This is the wave of the future as far as help desks go."

See related story, " Administrate On The Web, Too ."

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