Question

Your IT department would like to outsource the "service desk function" to a third-party service provider. The third-party service provider will have to provide 24/365 (hours/days) service for your global organization with offices in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. What service desk organization structure will you pick for this outsourced initiative, and how does it add value to the business? (You may consider hybrid architectures if you wish). Briefly describe a challenge you will face with a technology (technological management function) and a challenge with staffing roles involved with this outsource service during operation.

Furthermore, your IT department has decided to implement a custom application for the service desk staff to use to service global clients. Briefly describe what role application management and application development processes play in this custom application. List three (3) potential requirements you may want to include in your "Follow the Sun" SLA. Keep in mind that all offices may not use the same technology and do not speak the same language.

Answer 1

Outsourcing of IT Service Desk function reduces IT downtime cost along with improving experience of employees by making the team innovative and efficient.

For outsourcing a service desk function for an application where different offices understands different languages and have different work environment, virtual service desk structure has to be used. Virtual Service Desk allows to provide impression of centralised service desk by using internet nad various tools used in corporate environment. It provides a feature of home working, outsourcing or offshoring, and other combination for meeting user's demands. There is the need of safeguard formaintaining uniformity and consistency in cultural terms and service quantity. Through a single Virtual Service Desk setup, services can be provided to different countries by integrating a service knowledge management system. .

A major challenge that will be faced while outsourcing the service desk function will be the adoption of digital training. Addressing skill and knowledge gaps with the help of technical staff does not necessarily be costly or have lengthy processes. Tools for leveraging internal resources may be quickly created without a lot of technical expertise. Workers can complete the modules after training period, but training phase is a hurdle for staff and dealing with it efficiently.

For a custom application, Application management plays an important role in managing systems and applications. It is responsible for management of applications for complete lifecycle that maintains and supports operational applications. It plays a vital role in testing, improvement, and design of applications as a part of IT. Several processes of application development are important in maintaining viability of custom business software for meeting evolving needs and demands of market and user. It makes a software effective with the tasks like updating, installation, availability optimization, service desk functions, and performance.

Follow The Sun is effective for global organisations that wishes to combine multiple Service Desks at different locations for providing 24-hour-follow-the-sun service. In current scenario, it will be used for handling calls between these offices North America, Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East and providing 24/364 (hours/day) coverage at very low cost. Some requirements to be dealt with in this scenario includes:

• Suport of multiple landuages
• Maintaining technical coordination by providing multiple technologies
• Establishing a cost estimation process