A growing number of packages, such as Expert Advisor from Software Artistry, Inc., Indianapolis, have incorporated expert system capabilities to increase the speed and accuracy of help desk employee responses (see Software Magazine, January 1993).

Help desk packages can be used to track and solve almost any type of problem. Beyond internal help desk use, many computer and software companies use help desk software to facilitate the management of customer support lines or telephone systems.

During the past few years, corporations have purchased millions of microcomputers with the hope of improving employee productivity. While pundits debate the actual benefits of these purchases, firms agree on one simple reality: Employees are not productive if their computers are not working.

To remedy such problems, companies have begun purchasing microcomputer and client/server software that helps small teams of employees function as internal support centers that solve common problems. Typically, these groups are part of a corporate MIS department; additionally, they may take on noncomputer functions, such as answering questions about company policy.

Interest in these packages, dubbed help desk software, is growing. International Data Corp. (IDC), a Framingham, Mass., market research firm, pegs worldwide revenue for help desk software between $25 million and $30 million and expects a 20% growth rate during the next few years.

Estimates such as this paint a bright future for suppliers, but it is not a future without hurdles. User understanding of the benefits to be gained from these products is still spotty, and getting the message out is an expensive undertaking. Many suppliers of help desk software are small, start-up firms without marketing budgets capable of competing with the well-established players.

Users want help desk software that works with a wide range of systems and is thus cost-effective. They also want to integrate the packages with existing network management and electronic mail systems. Help desk products today run on a limited number of operating systems and would require significant investment by vendors to be ported to a broader set of platforms.

Help desks are common in many large firms. Typically, a user with a problem picks up the telephone and calls the help desk. A help desk official then takes down information, such as the type of computer, the software being run and the nature of the problem.

Software has been used to increase help desk efficiency. First, the software forces companies to store problem information in a common place and format, which is called a trouble ticket. Trouble tickets help companies identify faulty equipment. For instance, five users on one local-area network (LAN) may encounter network problems during one week. Without trouble tickets, one or more help desk employees may view the incidents as isolated. If trouble tickets are available, though, it is much easier to recognize a pattern of failure, such as a faulty network adapter.

Also, help desk software walks support personnel through procedures that can quickly pinpoint the cause of a problem. The software usually prompts employees to ask questions, such as "Have you plugged in your computer?" or "Are all the cables connected?"

The group operates as a model and often establishes standards for eight other central processing centers. Currently, the Summit office supports 3,500 microcomputer users as well as tracks telephone equipment problems for its users.

Ciba-Geigy examined a handful of help desk packages including Bendata's Heat. The major attraction of the Magic software was its simple installatin, said Dello Russo. "In order to get Heat up and running, we would have had to do a lot of customization," he said. "Frankly, we wanted to spend as little [time] as possible tinkering with the software."

The company put SupportMagic into operation a few days after taking a one-day training class. Currently, one full-time and three part-time employees run the help desk. While Ciba-Geigy is satisfied with the product and plans to share its experience with the firm's other central processing departments, Dello Russo noted one shortcoming with SupportMagic.

The growing interest in PC and client/server help desk software can be sourced to a variety of reasons. In some instances, the interest is part of the downsizing trend and moving mainframe and minicomputer applications to microcomputers and LANs.

"A few years ago, most companies sold mainframe help desk packages," explained Doug Nicholas, president of the Software Marketing Group, Inc., a Des Moines, Iowa, help desk software supplier. "During the past few years, the focus has shifted to small system products."

Many organizations deemed mainframe and minicomputer help desk packages, ranging from about $25,000 to $100,000, too expensive to purchase. Instead, these companies have been relying on manual, paperbased systems to track help desk calls. With the advent of packages for smaller systems, though, ranging in price from $5,000 for a four-user package to $20,000 for a 25-user package, these firms feel comfortable purchasing packaged software.

"Many companies took a simple database management system [DBMS] and built their own help desk applications," explained Kurt Johnson, a senior analyst with IDC. "With PC hardware and software becoming more complicated, companies needed more sophisticated packages to support their users. These companies did not have the resources to build these packages and are turning to third-party packages."

Help desk software is increasingly being designed for client/server environments, where the products are based on well-known distributed DBMS packages and support a variety of client and server operating systems.

With so many small, independent help desk software suppliers in the market, observers see the market as wide open. "We are in an early development stage, so almost any one of the various companies could become the market leader," noted Carter Lusher, a program director for personal computing services at the Gartner Group, Inc., Stamford, Conn.-based consulting firm.

Bendata Management Systems, Inc., in Colorado Springs, Colo., is one of the best known help desk software suppliers. The company's product, Helpdesk Expert Automation Tool (Heat), runs under Microsoft's MSDOS and Windows operating systems as well as on LANs that support IBM's NetBios protocol. Bendata designed Heat to work with mainframe help desk packages. It also has interfaces to configuration management packages, such as IBM's Information/Management (InfoMan) and NetMan from Systems Center, Inc., Reston, Va.

GROWING IMPORTANCE

Bendata's history is illustrative of the growing importance of help desk software. In August 1992, Ziff Communications Co., the New York parent of publishing giant Ziff-Davis Communications Co., purchased Bendata. Ziff Communications also purchased the Help Desk Institute in July 1992, which was then based in Colorado Springs, Colo. The institute runs shows, such as the annual International Help Desk Conference; offers help desk consulting services; and publishes help desk literature, such as a software buyers guide.

Bendata has a long list of customers. In 1989, La Quinta Motor Inns, Inc. in San Antonio, Texas, decided to automate a manual help desk that had been operating for 10 years. "Our system was inefficient because calls were not tracked in any manner. We started from scratch each time a user had a problem," explained James Rollins, La Quinta's field service manager.

The company's help desk answers questions from users at 200 inns throughout the country, who are using microcomputers from Hewlett-Packard Co., Cupertino, Calif., running SCO Unix from the Santa, Cruz Operation, Inc., Santa Cruz, Calif. La Quinta examined a few help desk packages and concluded that Heat was the easiest to configure. "We had a number of features that were unique to our operation and wanted to make sure our help desk package could support them," Rollins said.

Speed was another selling point Rollins said the software let help desk employees quickly complete trouble tickets and determine how to fix a problem. The faster an employee can resolve the problem, he said, the more the employee can get done.

Rollins also described the software as very easy to customize. La Quinta had Heat up and running one day after employees completed a one-day training class.

Rollins' wish list for Heat included mouse support, tighter integration between the package's basic functions and its messaging facility, and tighter database integration.

"A user can send a message, but he has to leave one program and enter a second," he said. "We would like him to be able to send the message from the main program." La Quinta uses Heat for telephone as well as computer problems. "Right now, we can't easily integrate information stored in our telephone and computer databases," Rollins said. "The customers are the same, so it would be simpler for us to maintain one set of data, such as configuration information, rather than two."

Magic Solutions, Inc. in Mahwah, N.J., is another well-known help desk software supplier. Founded in 1988, the firm sells ServiceMagic, which is geared to field service teams, and SupportMagic, a help desk and asset tracking system. The Magic products have optional Microsoft Windows front ends, which are not common in this market.

The Shelby County Data Processing Department in Memphis, Tenn., supports 1,200 government users working on various LANs. As microcomputers spread to these department and the volume of trouble calls increased, the agency's manual trouble tracking system was quickly overwhelmed.

At the end of 1991, the agency issued a request for proposals (RFP) to half a dozen help desk software suppliers. The RFP was comprehensive because the author, James Morris Jr., a senior programmer analyst at the Shelby County Data Processing Department, had run a help desk for Data General Corp. The agency selected Magic Solutions' Support-Magic because the product seemed more flexible and cost less than competitive offerings, which Morris declined to identify.

Since the county installed software in early 1992, a group of eight employees have staffed the help desk. Morris stated that one of the product's key features is its ability to group calls by problem type. If the agency's mainframe encounters problems, help desk personnel can place all corresponding trouble tickets in one queue. Once the problem is fixed, the group has a much simpler time closing out all the trouble tickets.

The agency is satisfied with the product but would like to see SupportMagic integrated with other programs. "We could use our system more efficiently if there were hooks to electronic mail or bulletin boards," Morris noted. "Those additions would make it much simpler for us to exchange information with our users."

Another SupportMagic user is the data processing department at Ciba-Geigy, Corp., Summit, N.J. In May 1991, the department decided to replace a set of manual help desk procedures with software. "The number of calls was constantly increasing so we need more efficient tools," explained Albert Dello Russo, a systems analyst at Ciba-Geigy.

"Generating ad hoc reports can be difficult," he said. "The package includes a number of predefined reports, but they do not always include the information we desire."

CIR consists of a group of modules that users can pick and choose, including Support Advantage, designed for internal help desks; Customer Advantage; Field Engineering Advantage; Quality Advantage; and SLT Advantage, designed for sales management.

Founded in 1988, Software Artistry has garnered attention because its expert system-based help desk tool, Expert Advisor, is designed to work in a client/server environment. The software, which runs on IBM's OS/2, works with a variety of DBMSs including IBM's OS/2 Database Server; IBM's SQL/400, bundled within the firm's OS/400 operating system; and NetWare SQL from Novell, Inc., Provo, Utah. Software Artistry plans to deliver versions of Expert Advisor that work with Oracle from Oracle Corp., Redwood Shores, Calif., and with SQL Server from Microsoft and Sybase sometime this year.

The software Marketing Group is a start-up firm that began building its help desk product in 1987. The firm designed a help desk system for 3M Corp. and decided there was a wider market for the product, dubbed Help Express. The software runs on microcomputers running OS/2 and NetWare LANs. The Software Marketing Group plans to deliver a Windows version of Help Express in the second half of this year.

Lysis Corp. in Decatur, Ga., first focused on field service support consulting and outsourcing. In 1989, the company moved into the software market with Shared Information SIStem software that runs on DEC's VMS, Microsoft's MS-DOS and variations of Unix. The company claims to have more than 50 customers including Bull Information Systems Inc., Billerica, Mass., and MCI, in Washington, D.C.

Initially, Shared Information SIStem was geared to suppliers running customer support centers, but the company has noticed a shift in the market. "A growing number of corporations are realizing that microcomputers are not simple to use and that many employees need help keeping their systems up and running," noted Deborah Fain, Lysis' president. "Consequently, the number of customers using our software for internal support systems is growing."

The company's revenues recently split between suppliers using the package for customer support centers and MIS departments running internal help desks, Fain said.

ProActive Software, Inc., Mountain View, Calif., is a start-up company backed by $5.5 million in venture capital. Roger Sippl, who founded Informix Software, Inc. in Menlo Park, Calif., and Steven Goldsworthy, former vice president of product development at Informix, founded the company in October 1990. The firm unveiled its help desk product line, dubbed Customer Information Resources (CIR), in November 1992. The software runs on DBMS from Informix and Sybase, Inc., in Emeryville, Calif. It supports Unix servers and both Microsoft Windows and Unix X terminal clients.

"The market for help desk software is not well defined but it is growing," said IDC's Johnson. "Those factors attract suppliers, which think they can define the market and take advantage of the growth," he added.

There are other areas of expansion in addition to network management software. "We need to transform help desk applications from a standalone system into an enterprise-wide software program," said Nicholas. "Help desk software has to incorporate features such as electronic mail, and use items, such as bulletin boards."

Despite the list of hurdles, observers are optimistic about healthy growth in the help desk market. "Corporations are under tremendous pressure to cut costs without increasing head count," noted Gartner's Lusher. "Help desk packages can accomplish that goal. So, I expect sales of these package to grow dramatically during the next few years."

Defining the market is a major issue. "Right now, customer awareness about help desk software is all over the map," noted Fain at Lysis. "Progressive corporations understand the need for the product and are able to discern differences between various systems. But many firms are confused about the capabilities found in different products."

SPREADING THE WORD

Gartner's Lusher concurred. "Suppliers need to do missionary work and spread the word about how their products can solve customer problems." Spreading the word poses problems for many, because they are small and not well funded.

Also, the process of setting up internal support systems is still in an early stage of development. "Corporations are just beginning to define the processes that have to be put in place to efficiently deal with customer and employee problems," explained Fain. "Until the processes are defined and understood, it will be difficult for suppliers to build packages that meet user requirements."

Even though the processes are, in many cases, still being defined, customers are asking suppliers for more. "Currently, most help desk applications operate only under MSDOS," noted Nicholas at the Software Marketing Group. "Users want to run them on other systems, with an obvious need for Windows applications and growing interest in Unix," he said. "However, there are questions about how many platforms each supplier can support. So companies have to make sure they invest their research and development dollars wisely."

In addition to broader platform support, companies want connectivity to other types of packages. Links to network management systems are an obvious requirement. For instance, ProActive's CIR software has become the foundation for a help desk application available from NetLabs, Inc., in Los Altos, Calif., a company which sells network management software. A few help desk products offer connections to popular mainframe systems, but such links are the exceptions rather than the rule.