If your business is not using a service desk, and the lack of a ticketing system is causing your team of technicians to solve problems like a team of firefighters, here are some reasons why this disorganization could be costing you a lot of money.
Without an IT Help Desk System, Requests Are Too Scattered
One of the most common problems. Lacking a service desk causes IT requests to be dispersed among multiple platforms, giving your technicians greater difficulties when tracking incoming issue reports. This is because not all customers use the same means of contact. While some of them might contact you by phone, others might contact you via email or instant message.
The lack of organization can cause problems that require urgent attention to be dealt with too late, causing your clients to suffer from reduced productivity, or what’s worst, leaving them vulnerable to a cyber-attack. As you can imagine, this is not good for your business, as it could not only damage your company’s reputation, but it could also damage your clients.
You need a Ticketing System to Prioritize Your Urgent Requests
If there is one thing that is vital to the success of an IT Company, it is to be able to sort its requests according to their urgency. Having a ticketing system will allow your IT team to deal with the right request, at the right time.
There are different ways to assess the severity of a request, the most important being those that affect a greater number of users or could lead to security breach.
The Lack of an IT Service Desk System Is Going To Affect You Sooner or Later
With a simple unforeseen event, things could spiral out of control overnight. What might seem like a regular morning could turn into a nightmare for your technicians as soon as they receive more requests than they are used to.
That’s why an IT Service Desk can help you solve this by ensuring that all problems are dealt with efficiently and in an orderly fashion.
On the other hand, they allow each customer to be informed about when their request will be solved, preventing further complaints.
These ticketing systems have a high organizational value, offering us the possibility to assign dates to IT tasks that need to be completed regularly, such as software updates, backups, and password changes.
Having these things under control will allow you to avoid major problems, which could reduce urgent requests drastically, or at least prepare your team to solve them.
Using an IT Service Desk Can Improve your Profits
Unlike “break and fix” services, which are based on calling a technician when a problem arises and paying him for his work hour, having managed IT services will allow you to adopt a different business model, helping you to create a consistent relationship with your clients, through a monthly or annual service fee.
This is a great advantage, as it will not only help you to have a constant flow of work but will allow your customers to have an overview of your workload through a transparent interface.
In today’s post, we would like to highlight and recommend an IT Service Desk solution that has been recognized as a leader in two IDC MarketSpace.
What’s ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus?
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus is a full-stack service management platform for the digital enterprise. It has an automated system, which can solve the most mechanical activities of our service, allowing us to focus on the problems that need an immediate solution.
It is an excellent tool to reduce operational costs, allowing us to solve a greater number of problems before they appear and manage all our projects in the same place, without having to increase our staff.
ServiceDesk Plus Key Features
Incident Management
Solve IT incidents faster by automatically assign tickets based on a technician’s expertise for accurate, timely resolutions and prevent recurrence of incidents. 
Problem Management
Reduce the volume of incidents through proactive identification and fixing of issues before users even experience any.
Change Management
They say the only thing permanent is change. It’s best to manage change requests effectively and efficiently without missing even a single step.
Reports
Once data with regards to all aspects of your IT is in the system, the reports will prove to be very useful as they will be able to help drive important data-driven decisions.
More key features:
How much does it cost?
ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus offers three plans, each one designed for your business needs.
A standardized pricing model is offered based on the number of IT team members and the number of IT assets managed. We believe this is a great advantage since there are several factors to consider when deploying a service desk.
There is a price difference between the on-premises and the cloud version with the on-premises plan costing slightly higher.
The needs between one IT staff and another can vary greatly, making it necessary to be advised to choose an ideal service, as it will represent the backbone of your business.
We discovered that the price of the annual subscription for a team of 10 technicians is $1,195, which is incredibly affordable for even small businesses.
We recommend you start with the Service Desk Plus trial version. It will give you a general idea about how a service desk works, so you can decide if this solution is the right one for your business.
What’s The Best Plan for You?
If this is your first time using help desk software, the Standard Plan is an excellent starting point. It will give you access to an excellent ticketing system, as well as incident management, a self-service portal, and your own reporting system.
But, if you really want to make a positive impact on your team’s performance, the Professional Plan is your best option. It will give you access to their asset management system, allowing you to manage your software and create an asset inventory report, as well as giving you access to purchasing and contract management.
However, our recommendation for the day is the Enterprise Plan. While many software packages have “premium packages” that fail to stand out from the rest of their offerings, we believe ManageEngine’s true value proposition is found in this plan. From managing incidents, problems, changes, and releases, to our services, assets, and IT projects, it is without a doubt the best this company has to offer.
Another important consideration is to evaluate if your organization would perform better with the Cloud or On-Premises version. The ServiceDesk Plus On-Premises vs Cloud feature comparison page clearly states the differences.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Allows your IT team to follow up on tickets very easily.
- Aligned with ITSM best practice processes.
- AI-powered functionalities and chatbots.
- It is very easy to set up and start using.
- It has a ticket analysis tool, so the technician’s performance can be evaluated.
Cons
- May require training to fully utilize all features and functionalities.
- The initial configuration process could be tedious depending on how much data you have.
Is This Full-Stack Service Management Platform For You?
If you are an IT service provider, you will definitely need a Service Desk System sooner or later. Getting this system in place before problems hit your organization could save you serious headaches, and help you avoid losing customer relationships.
But, if problems have already started to arise in your organization, having a service desk service is not just an option. It’s what could decide the future of your business.
We hope this article has been very useful to you. Don’t forget to check out our other publications, to help you scale your business!
Until our next post!
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