Service desk tools are used in just about every industry. For larger organizations, you can argue that they’re quite essential to manage tickets, service requests and other IT tasks. In this blog, we review four components of a service desk tool and calculate how much it can save your organization.

To make things simple, let’s use an organization of 1000 employees that uses a knowledge base, an IT service request portal, and automates employee onboarding. Each of these points reduces the number of tickets and time it takes to complete each ticket widely varies from one organization to the other, we won’t include the time or money saved for this task. Therefore, the savings we calculate in this blog is not complete and this organization is saving more time and money in reality.

Spoiler alert: This organization will save a minimum of $330,807 in time and money by using a service desk tool.

1. Knowledge Base

Forrester states that an organization of 1000 employees would process 1832 issues per month.¹ MetricNET indicates that the average cost per service desk issue is $22 when resolved by a technician and $2 per issue when resolved by self-help.² Therefore, resolving 25% of issues via self-help services such as a knowledge base would reduce support costs by $9114 per month. (We’re using 25% as a base but your employees may be solving more of their own issues with the knowledge base)

1823 issues per month x $22 per issue = $40,106 cost per month when a technician needs to address the issue.

However, we know that a self-help solution would resolve 25% of the issues. That is 456 issues.

456 x $22 = $10,032 of staffing costs is prevented.

However, the cost doesn’t wipe out completely. It still costs $2 to solve an issue with a self-help solution.

456 issues x $2 per issue = $912

$10,032 – $912 = $9120 savings per month or $109,440 savings per year

And that is if the self-help solution only solves 25% of issues. It could be even more.

2. IT Service Request Portal

For this feature, the organization does not save money but alleviates time for IT technicians to work on other projects. For example, instead of answering emails, the IT technician can focus on network security. As a result, organizations can save 333 hours or $9,688 per year in staffing costs by automating IT service requests.

To clarify, what we mean by the portal, employees request IT Services such as a request to borrow a projector, purchase new software, or replace a keyboard. This process can be automated with a service desk’s request portal. The alternative requires several emails back and forth, checking inventory and maybe even a few phone calls.

In our example of an organization of 1000 employees, we assume that it takes 10 minutes to address one request. With an average of two requests per employee, per year, that’s 2000 requests and 20,000 minutes of the IT technician. Based on an average IT Support Technician salary of $54,000 and 1856 annual working hours, $9,688 in staffing costs can be saved or reallocated to other projects.³

10 minutes per request x (2 requests per employee x 1000 employees) = 333 hours saved

333 hours x ($54,000 IT Support Salary/1856 annual working hours) = $9,688 saved per year 

3. Automating Employee Onboarding

This feature saves employees time and promotes productivity, as opposed to saving the organization actual dollars.

A Forrester study found that new employees wait an average of 3.5 days to receive all the resources required to start the tasks of their job.¹ To ensure employees can start working from day one, our service desk tool, VIZOR, has onboarding and role-based provisioning functionality. Even if employees can work while waiting for their assets, employees still lose about 30% productivity.

Mercer states that the average employee turnover rate in the US is 22%.⁵ According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median wage for workers in the United States during Q3 2018 was $857 per week.⁶  This information is needed to calculate an average of how many new employees will require onboarding. After all the calculations, VIZOR saves 46 weeks of lost productivity for an organization of 1000 employees.

3.5 days (1000 employees x 22% turnover rate x 30% productivity loss) = 231 working days of lost productivity

$857 per week x 47 weeks (231 working days ) of lost productivity) = $40,279 saved per year

4. Improve Employee Productivity

This last feature also promotes productivity. Sometimes the right tools can streamline many processes. MetricNet states that 8 hours of unproductive employee time per year can be saved by implementing systematic ITSM processes.² AS a result, an ITIL certified solution, like VIZOR, can save 200 working weeks. In this case, saving time is done by reducing time to resolution, preventing outages, and improving responsiveness to requests. ITIL certified best practices for incident management was created to solve just that.

For calculation purposes, consider that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) the median wage for workers in the United States in Q3 2018 was $857 per week. ⁶ Assuming there are 40 hours in a workweek, this totals $171,400 in lost employee productivity.

8 hours per employee per year x 1000 employees = 8000 hours saved or 200 working weeks

$857 per week x 200 working weeks of lost productivity = $171,400 saved per year.

Conclusion

As a result, a total savings of $330,807 per year in cost and staff.

Inevitably we are just scratching the surface on what you can save with a service desk tool. If you already have one, consider the following questions:

• Are you capitalizing on its features?
• Have you spent time setting up the processes that work for your organization?
• Does it have all the features you need?

If you answered “no” to anyone of these questions, consider looking for a new tool. It could be that it’s too difficult to use. You can check out the prices of VIZOR ServiceDesk here.

References 1 – Forrester, “Total Economic Impact™ Study” 2 – MetricNet “Best Practices Series” 3 – Glassdoor, “US IT Support Technician Salary” 4 – Gartner “IT Budget” 5 – Mercer, “North American Employee Turnover: Trends And Effects” 6 – U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Usual Weekly Earnings Of Wage And Salary Workers Third Quarter 2018”