Part of the decision stems from SRIC's size; the company employs about 160 employees in four cities. To bring an adequate IT department, with high-end consultants, specialists, and enough staff to cover vacations, illness, and ordinary computer crises, the company would have had to nearly double in size.

The first article of this series on IT outsourcing in the financial services industry focused on negotiating the outsourcing deal with the supplier. In this article, I'll describe a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) initiative that yielded positive results for help desk functions at a large investment services company.

American companies which have adopted help desk outsourcing as part of an overall outsourcing program can cut their labor expenses by more than seventy percent, yet still receive the same revenue from the services provided by the outsource workers. This translates to an immediate increase the positive cash flow of these companies, which is the only way for them to ensure their survival.

Obviously the major areas of benefit relate to economies of scale and the advantages of utilizing a specialist and focused provider. However, it is important that there is no illusion with respect to help desk management: ultimate responsibility for the help desk is retained. Poor help desk provision will adversely effect the help desk provider, not only the outsourcing firm.

Help Desk services are built upon three distinct assets; Tools, processes, and resources. ActivSupport can provide organizations with a comprehensive help desk outsourcing solution or a menu approach where you can mix and match available components such as call center solutions for maximal flexibility. To find out more information about helpdesk outsourcing with a buyer perspective check out this excellent resource called the IT outsourcing toolkit.

A detailed SLA (Service Level Agreement) is an absolutely critical component of the outsourcing initiative, or indeed, of general helpdesk control and management. It defines roles, responsibilities, requirements and much more. It is very much the basis of understanding between the two parties. The IT Outsourcing partner has to care about your help desk the way you do. Infonaligy is your Helpdesk outsourcing solution and partner. We treat your helpdesk as if it was ours because it is!

As we reported in 2005, the help desk outsourcing service market is mature, and the results in 2007 were minor shifts on the Magic Quadrant and a tighter grouping of the leaders. Since this is a mature market, the service providers continued to concentrate on processes, automated tools and geographic locations to reduce their costs. Many service providers used self-help tools and alternative contact methods (such as e-mail, instant messaging and Web access), and offered Web scoreboards to report their help desk service-level results.

As we reported in 2005, the help desk outsourcing service market is mature, and the results in 2007 were minor shifts on the Magic Quadrant and a tighter grouping of the leaders. Since this is a mature market, the service providers continued to concentrate on processes, automated tools and geographic locations to reduce their costs. Many service providers used self-help tools and alternative contact methods (such as e-mail, instant messaging and Web access), and offered Web scoreboards to report their help desk service-level results.

The main advantage for them is significantly reduced overhead expenses since they pay the outsourcing company a contracted amount and are not responsible for personnel expenses such as payroll taxes, workers' compensation insurance and employee benefits for the employees of the call center that provide their sales, service and support functions.

The most common reason for a host company to consider outsourcing its user support service is to hand what is seen as a problematical department over to a specialist organisation. "Supporting computers is the forte of the computer industry, so an outsourcing company must be better at it than we are". Seems logical, but it is the first fallacy of helpdesk outsourcing. Some of the biggest names in the outsourcing industry have service levels that are no better and in some cases worse than internal helpdesks could achieve. And it's not just the new startups, or the cowboy outfits - large, well-known organisations, offering support services for years, can still make the most fundamental service management errors, and offer service levels below the current industry average. It's astonishing - even exasperating - but true.