Computer Network Support for Mid-size Companies

The Economics of Help Desk Outsourcing or Co-sourcing
Progent's Help Desk outsourcing and co-sourcing services deliver substantial business benefits compared with going it alone with a Help Desk staffed solely by internal employees. Some of the benefits of Help Desk outsourcing, such as improved computer or network uptime, obviously contribute to productivity but are not easy to evaluate in dollars and cents. Other areas, like internal salaries compared to granular billing for external Help Desk Call Center services, can be deceptive at first. This discussion is intended to examine the key cost issues associated with choosing an in-house or an outsourced or co-sourced Help Desk Call Center.

If you have an in-house Help Desk Call Center, you may need to decide whether your organization ought to expand your service group or outsource/co-source Help Desk Call Center services. You could reach this juncture owing to a variety of circumstances. Examples include:

• Workforce growth is overwhelming your Help Desk
• One of your Help Desk team has left
• You are starting up an additional branch in another region
• Work-from-Home employees have increased Help Desk Call Center call tickets and introduced new types of IT support problems
• Your Help Desk team members are required for helping with strategic IT initiatives

The Cost of an In-House Help Desk Call Center Worker
It's natural but unrealistic to compare the base salaries of in-house personnel with the granular by-the-minute costs of an outsourced Help Desk Call Center group. Although typical costs for an in-house Level 1 IT support person differ from city to city (e.g., Tupelo vs. New York), most areas in the U.S. are in this range:

• Typical Salary for Level 1 Tech: $45,000-$65,000
• Taxes, Benefits, Paid Time Off: $18,000-$26,000
• Equipment Costs: $2,000
• Software: $1,000-$4,000
• Office Space, Supplies, Furnishings, Utilities: $4,000-$10,000
• Ongoing Education: $1,000
• Total: $71,000 - $108,000

In order to make a fair evaluation between the cost/benefits of an in-house Call Center vs. Progent's external Help Desk services, the costs of Progent's services should be looked at against the advantages. Items to consider include:

• Progent charges Help Desk Call Center clients for service on a per-minute basis and at a discount: Typical price to Progent clients for outsourced Level 1 Help Desk Call Center support begin at about $18 for each user monthly. Fine-grained pricing means utilization is virtually 100%. You only pay for services delivered. Salaried internal employees invariably encounter dead time that you pay for.
• Progent can provide 24x7 service: Progent's standard service coverage is 14 hours on weekdays. 24x7 service is optional. Internally staffed Help Desks are usually open only during normal working hours. This can impede productivity if serious problems arise during off hours. In addition, exfiltration threats such as ransomware are typically launched during weekends when network support teams are thinly staffed.
• Progent's Help Desk scales easily: Hiring new internal IT employees can take weeks or months. By leveraging Progent's nationwide roster of network support experts you can adjust your Help Desk capacity as needed. You don't have to worry about finding replacements for technicians calling in sick, hiring additional support staff to meet growing demand or to replace employees who leave, or cutting back your full-time internal IT staff when business slows down. You can easily respond to business activity inherent to your market or responsive to the economy as a whole.
• Guaranteed responsiveness: Progent offers Service Level Agreements to make sure support calls are handled quickly. Internal Help Desk Call Center teams can offer no practical substitute for a Service Level Agreement.
• Breadth of technical expertise: Progent has been providing remote technical support for over 20 years. Progent's IT support experts are steeped in a broad range of advanced and older technologies deployed in a variety of industries. This range of skills allows Progent to save time and expense by providing fast solutions to problems that might otherwise be escalated to a higher and more pricey support level. In today's quickly evolving IT landscape, it is hard on the budget when newer products and technologies need to be mastered on your dime. Also, Progent's expertise makes it possible to anticipate and correct budding IT problems before they have a chance to impact productivity.
• Access to subject matter experts (SMEs): Progent's Help Desk Call Center outsourcing and co-sourcing services also provide access to Progent's group of SMEs to offer quick resolution of Level 2 and Level 3 IT problems that are outside the skill set of most Level 1 Help Desk Call Center techs. Progent's capacity to come up with the right SME for a high-level issue can minimize costly downtime.
• Enterprise-grade secure multi-tenant ticketing and monitoring system: Progent securely shares enterprise-grade service automation software that permits Progent and customers to generate and track IT trouble tickets, establish responsibility, show the status of issues, document activity, and generate management analytics.
• Help Desk co-management shares the work: Progent's Co-sourced Help Desk Call Center service seamlessly shares service calls between a client's internal IT support team and Progent's nationwide pool of support technicians and subject matter experts. You select how trouble tickets are allocated, but Progent usually deals with Level 1 and Level 3 tickets. The Help Desk Call Center software transparently ticket creation, escalation or de-escalation, tracking, and reporting. Co-sourcing permits your in-house techs to deliver in-person assistance when situations call for it and at the same time enables rapid scale-up for online support.
• Have your in-house network service group concentrate on strategic issues: Your internal network service group understands more about your business than any external support organization. Using Progent's Help Desk Call Center outsourcing services liberates these valuable resources from being consumed by low-level troubleshooting like configuring work-at-home routers and offers them the opportunity to work on marshalling technology to provide competitive advantage.

Learn More about Progent's Help Desk Outsourcing Services
To find out more about Progent's Help Desk Outsourcing and Co-sourcing services, visit Progent's Help Desk outsourcing services. To find out how to get started with Progent's Help Desk service programs, phone 800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.