Your IT service helpdesk acts as a bridge between your IT department and the rest of your business.
More than that, your business depends on the IT department to keep systems available and operational. When something goes wrong with the tools that, for example, HR use, often the first port of call is to contact the IT helpdesk. By contacting IT, your HR problems become requests which are then turned into helpdesk tickets.
The helpdesk provides a central point of contact for business users to gain assistance to troubleshooting, get answers to tech-related questions, and solving problems for your users. It’s one of those functional aspects of the business that we often fail to give its due credit, but it’s not a stretch to say that without our IT helpdesks, many of our other business processes would inevitably ‘grind to a halt’.
And yet, every day, thanks to the rise in the technology we use to get our work done, there are points of tension between the helpdesk and the rest of the business.
These include, but are not limited to:
- A high volume of service requests – if only it was HR that needed help! When requests are coming from all departments it puts pressure on your IT department.
- Repetitive processes – believe it or not, IT technicians can suffer from boredom if they are subjected to the same, rote tasks week after week. And often these mundane tasks are taking resources away from tasks of higher value.
- Multiple channels of communication – requests can be phoned in, emailed or made in-person. This can be confusing if there are multiple requests pouring in from every angle. It can lead to poor management of helpdesk tickets and the servicing of these requests.
- Confusion over helpdesk tickets – timelines, deadlines and tickets due can cause tension on both sides of the business.
These pains points can lead to delays in your IT system, which can lead to downtime across the business and frustration among your employees.
And that’s not even mentioning the external support the IT helpdesk may have to provide to your customers. So, while it’s one of the most important cogs in your business machine, your IT helpdesk is one of the ‘hot spots’ of where friction can occur in your organization.
This needs to be acknowledged, confronted and solved.
Understanding the Misunderstanding
Looking at our list of pain points above, we can see that a lot of the misunderstandings that develop between these areas of the business are often down to rather straightforward and fundamental issues:
- The way requests are made
- A muddled system of allocating and processing work tickets
- A lack of clarity over when IT will resolve the problem
At Nintex, we believe in the power of workflow automation to solve issues like those that occur between your IT helpdesk and other departments, by helping to combat the underlying problems and produce a faster, more accurate process. Automated workflows are ideal solutions for making the whole procedure of IT helpdesk tickets and requests more efficient.
The Manual Cost of Everyday Issues
Imagine: a member of your finance team has been on vacation and the password to their finance tool has expired while they were away. They have also unwittingly attempted their old password three times and are now locked out of the tool.
So, they send an email to the IT helpdesk with a request for a password reset, but after 20 minutes there is still no reply. They call the helpdesk over the phone. But the IT helpdesk can’t—for security reasons—reset passwords over the phone. Our employee checks their email again but still no reply. They decide to walk over to the IT department and try to solve their issue face to face.
All of this takes time. Time your employee could be spending on valuable projects for their team and customers.
Meanwhile, the IT helpdesk has a backlog of similar level requests—a printer is down; Adobe Reader needs to be updated; the network is slow; a ‘frozen’ computer, etc., and they are too swamped to even reply to emails.
By employing a Nintex Workflow, your IT team can automate a lot of these ‘run of the mill’ problems and processes.
- Your finance team member could use an instant messenger request for a password reset, which would be automatically kick off the workflow;
- The messenger would automatically ask several standard questions to identify them;
- The employee information would be captured and ticket automatically created;
- The ticket then automatically routes to a specific technician (based on their expertise/task list volume);
- The IT staff member could easily verify the account in line with security protocol;
- The workflow integrates with your organization’s ITIL service management system ensuring IT policy compliance;
- The problem is resolved and our finance employee receives a notification via instant messenger, to follow instructions via email for resetting their password
The Outcome, in Short?
By using Nintex Workflow to design a workflow automation as part of your IT helpdesk process, you will be able to:
- Optimize spend and time
- Ensure compliance and mitigate risk
- Improve user and customer satisfaction
- Reduce IT overhead and improve productivity
- Allow your IT resources to focus their talent on high-value tasks
At Nintex, we specialize in workflow automation for every department in your business. Get in touch today to see how we can transform your daily processes.
