IT Service Management Is Under Pressure

As a major cost driver, IT Support  is under pressure from budget cut backs.   Regrettably, so too are key IT initiatives (e.g. migrations, or desktop refreshes) that promised to ease the IT support burden.

Even More Cost Cuts are Required

This is not the first time IT support costs have been squeezed.  That means managers know where to find some immediate cuts, without impacting too much the levels of service available to users.  But, when these initial cuts have been made where to find the next round of savings?

How to squeeze additional efficiencies without too much pain?

In most organizations there are a range of IT support related efficiencies that go under exploited. That is opportunities to squeeze additional efficiencies without too much pain. The reason these areas are so often over looked is because of shortcomings in the IT inventory data available to managers.

IT Inventory Inaccuracy Drives Support Cost

With analysts suggesting that IT inventory data estimates are out by as much as 20%, that means IT support costs can be out by as much. Bottom line, there are often 100’s of unaccounted for devices and software on the typical corporate network.

Even where software and hardware is accurately recorded in the inventory, there is often little information regarding its status, or use. All this has implications in terms of IT support costs, including:

· Leases, support and licensing costs in respect of machines that are/should be retired and are under used, or under utlilised

· Machines with unsupported software, where patches have not been installed and with out of date anti-virus, encryption, etc. software

· Longer call handling times owing to the lack of status information to guide diagnosis

These unnecessary costs can run in to 6 and 7 figure sums annually, regardless of whether IT is out-sourced, transfer charged , or delivered IT from a fixed budget.

More Accurate IT Inventory Data Pin-Points Service Efficiencies

Managers need more accurate information on what it is that they are expected to support. They need a thorough and dynamic inventory of all hardware and software on their networks. That will enable them to determine more precisely the IT support needs and resources required.

All this is predicated however on the use of new tools, such as from iQuate, to cost effectively audit, inventorize and monitor what are increasingly sprawling networks.