Computer Network Outsourcing for Midsize Companies

The Economics of Help Desk Call Center Outsourcing or Co-sourcing
Progent's Help Desk Call Center outsourcing services deliver significant business benefits in comparison to maintaining a Help Desk Call Center staffed exclusively by internal IT personnel. Many of the benefits of outsourcing, such as increased computer availability, obviously contribute to productivity but are difficult to evaluate in dollars. Other issues, like internal salaries vs. per-minute billing for external Help Desk support, can be misleading at first glance. This discussion will clarify some of the major cost issues related to going with an in-house or an outsourced or co-sourced Help Desk Call Center.

If you operate an internally staffed Help Desk Call Center, you may need to make a decision whether your business should expand your support staff or outsource Help Desk Call Center services. You could reach this juncture due to a variety of common circumstances. These include:

• Workforce growth is swamping your Help Desk Call Center
• One of your Help Desk team has left
• You are opening a new branch in a different city
• Work-from-Home users have increased Help Desk call tickets and introduced different sorts of IT support problems
• Your Help Desk Call Center team members are more valuable helping with strategic IT initiatives

The Cost of an Internal Help Desk Worker
It's tempting but unrealistic to compare the base salaries of in-house workers with the granular per-minute costs of an outsourced Help Desk Call Center group. Although typical costs for an internal IT support worker differ from state to state and city to city (e.g., Atlanta vs. San Francisco), most areas in the U.S. are in this range:

• Typical Base Salary for Level 1 Technician: $45,000-$65,000
• Taxes, Benefits, PTO: $18,000-$26,000
• Hardware 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 realistic 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. Issues to take into account include:

• Progent bills Help Desk customers for service by the minute and at a discount: Average cost to Progent clients for Progent's Level 1 Help Desk support begin at about $18 per user monthly. Granular pricing means utilization is virtually 100%. You are only charged for services received. Salaried in-house workers invariably encounter dead time that you pay for.
• Progent can provide extended hours support: Progent's regular service coverage is 14 hours on weekdays. 24x7 service programs are optional. In-house Help Desk Call Centers are typically open only for regular working hours. This could impact productivity if serious issues arise during off hours. Also, exfiltration threats such as ransomware are typically activated during weekends when IT support teams are thinly staffed.
• Progent's Help Desk Call Center scales on demand: Hiring new internal technical employees could take months. By leveraging Progent's extensive roster of network support professionals you can adjust your Help Desk capacity as needed. You don't have to fret about substituting for people on sick leave, attracting additional technical support staff to meet growing demand or to replace employees who leave, or trimming your full-time internal IT staff if business slows. You can easily respond to business cycles inherent to your market or reflective of the economy in general.
• Guaranteed responsiveness: Progent provides Service Level Agreements to make sure service calls are responded to quickly. In-house Help Desk teams can offer no real substitute for an SLA.
• Breadth of technical skills: Progent has been delivering online IT support for more than 20 years. Progent's technical support professionals are familiar with a broad range of new and old generation technologies deployed in a wide variety of industries. This set of skills enables Progent to save time and expense by delivering rapid solutions to issues that could otherwise be promoted to a higher and more pricey support level. In our quickly evolving IT world, it is hard on the budget when newer technologies have to be learned at your expense. Also, Progent's experience makes it possible to anticipate and fix looming technical issues before they have a chance to impact productivity.
• Fast access to subject matter experts: Progent's Help Desk Call Center outsourcing services also allow access to Progent's team of subject matter experts to offer quick resolution of Level 2 and Level 3 technical issues that are beyond the scope of most Level 1 Help Desk Call Center techs. Progent's ability to come up with the appropriate SME for an advanced issue can minimize the disruption caused by downtime.
• Enterprise-class multi-tenant ticketing and tracking system: Progent securely shares enterprise-class service management technology that permits Progent and customers to generate and monitor IT trouble tickets, assign responsibility, show the real-time status of problems, document services performed, and generate management analytics.
• Help Desk co-management shares the work: Progent's Co-managed Help Desk Call Center service transparently shares service requests between a client's in-house IT support team and Progent's nationwide pool of service techs and subject matter experts. You determine the way trouble tickets are allocated, but Progent typically handles Level 1 and Level 3 issues. The Help Desk Call Center software seamlessly ticket creation, escalation or de-escalation, monitoring, and reporting. Co-sourcing permits your in-house staff to provide hands-on assistance when situations require it and at the same time enables fast scale-up for online help.
• Have your internal IT service group concentrate on strategic aspects of your business: Your internal network support group knows more about your business than any external support organization. Using Progent's Help Desk Call Center outsourcing services frees these precious resources from being swamped by Level 1 troubleshooting such as configuring work-at-home routers and gives them the chance to work on marshalling technology to deliver competitive advantage.

Find Out More about Progent's Help Desk Outsourcing Services
To learn more about Progent's Help Desk Call Center Outsourcing and Co-sourcing services, see Progent's Help Desk Call Center outsourcing services. To ask about how to get started with Progent's Help Desk Call Center services, call 800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.