“On boarding for the service desk could not have gone better.”

– Vice-President of IT

Challenges

Our client, a midsized U.S. manufacturer, was growing and adding employees, which was outstripping the capacity of their in-house team of IT technicians providing user support. The support model was informal and lacked tools and processes to manage tickets and automate routine tasks, such as password resets. At the same time, the users needed onsite support in their manufacturing plant from technicians
knowledgeable about their devices and environment.

By finding an external service provider to provide user support, they hoped to free up their more senior and leadership-level resources, who were spending too much time resolving user support incidents. Overall, they recognized that they needed a more structured user support model.

As they began searching for a partner to assist them with their service desk and field support, they evaluated 10 prospective service providers. Initially, they looked for whether the service provider was even really listening to their needs, rather than just pushing a canned service or product. Following this, their main criteria were:

• Flexibility – Would the service provider craft a solution that would meet the organization’s specific needs, or did they only have a “one size fits all” offering?
• Bestshoring – Did the service provider provide bestshoring options incorporating onshore, nearshore, and offshore capabilities that could be brought to bear according to their needs?
• Scalability – Could the solution cost-effectively scale up and down?
• Seamlessness – Could the service provider act as a seamless extension of the organization’s team and be nearly transparent to the users?

Of course, cost savings were also definitely important. They wanted a support model that would provide improved service levels at a lower cost. They did not want, however, a low-cost solution that was weak in meeting other needs.

Following their evaluation, they determined that only Celsior was adequately flexible to address all their requirements.

Our solution

Celsior proposed transforming their end-user IT support to a managed service desk with extended business day coverage plus after-hours, on-call support, effectively providing support for 24/7 operations. To handle field support, Celsior was able to rebadge current personnel as Celsior employees. The solution was based on an approach that allowed the organization to co-create an end-user support solution that included tools, processes, and appropriate SLAs.

A key intent was to make the move as seamless as possible. The client wanted to transition their in-house service desk to a managed service desk without any of their users realizing initially that a transition had been made. This objective was met to the client’s delight.

At the same time, with a phased approach and a combination of on-site and remote support, we closed the gap between the service level the client had been providing and what they wanted to provide.

Business outcomes

The new, managed service desk has met or exceeded all SLAs. The client reported that they are now getting improved service desk metrics that they had never achieved. Personnel offloaded, through the move to an outside service provider, are now able to focus on more strategic, higher-value endeavors. At the same time, the matured support processes have improved user experience and satisfaction. CSAT scores have been 4.9 out of 5. The Vice President of IT stated that “Onboarding for the service desk could
not have gone better.”

The success has not just been in service levels and employee satisfaction. Based on the managed service desk and an accompanying Celsior-provided solution for endpoint management, IT has achieved a dramatic cut in costs. Four years ago, they had 21 people in IT. Now, they are down to only nine FTEs. Annual IT savings are $200k—a significant number for a midsized organization.

And, as the VP of IT pointed out, as they significantly reduced the cost of the end user services, they got a significantly better product.