Managed Service Desk vs In-House Help Desk

Managed service desk vs in-house is a choice about who answers employees’ IT tickets: the firm’s own staff, a provider’s staff, or both. The answer can turn on three things a firm already has. These are the kinds of ticket it gets, the hours its employees work and the number of its sites. Keeping the desk in-house can be the right answer, and so can handing part of it over. The desk as a whole has its own Signisys use case, on help for employees with IT.

Managed Service Desk vs In-House: The Three Options Named

Three options are open to the firm. Under the in-house option, the firm’s own staff take the tickets. Under the managed option, an outside provider’s staff answer them, working to a handover the firm writes. In a hybrid, each side answers the kinds of ticket given to it.

In this article, a managed help desk means the same thing as a managed service desk: outside staff answering a firm’s employees.

Two more terms come up below. First line takes the call and fixes the simple fault. Second line then takes what first line hands on, such as a fault that calls for more access or a visit.

This side-by-side is a Signisys comparison, our own way of setting the options next to each other. We claim no published scheme behind it.

What Staying In-House Gives the Firm

Staying in-house is the option a firm already knows, and its strengths are easy to overlook. A technician who works in the firm has met its people and seen its rooms. Equally, the effort it takes stays out of sight until someone is away.

Set out plainly, here are both sides of staying in-house.

For a firm with one site, office hours and a ticket mix that stays the same, in-house is a sound answer. In that case, the cons above may stay small.

What a Managed Desk Gives the Firm

A provider’s staff can answer outside office hours, and they can cover the days a firm’s own technician is away. The firm can also ask for skills it does not employ, such as someone who knows a system that only one team uses.

In this article, IT help desk outsourcing means handing first line to a provider while second line stays inside. That is one form of the managed option, and a hybrid can grow from it.

Something moves the other way too. Everyday knowledge of the firm’s rooms and people reaches the provider’s staff when the firm writes it down. For example, a provider’s technician learns which meeting room has the faulty screen when someone records it. The handover is the firm’s to write, and the IT head keeps it current.

An employee also meets a new voice on the phone. Under a managed desk, the employee explains a fault to someone who has not seen the room. Clear first details from the employee count for more. What happens when a request arrives with too little detail is traced in how a one-line ticket turns into rounds of questions.

Managed Service Desk vs In-House: Reading the Ticket Mix

The IT head starts with last quarter’s tickets. First, the IT head sorts them by kind, such as access, hardware, a shared system or a visit to a room. Next, the IT head notes the hour each one arrived.

Four situations show how that reading points to a first move:

• Tickets arrive outside office hours. That points toward managed or hybrid. A first move is to write down which kinds need an answer outside office hours.
• The work is mainly on-site hardware and rooms. That points toward in-house or hybrid. A first move is to list the visits a provider’s staff would have to make.
• Tickets are simple and the team is light on cover. That points toward hybrid. A first move is to hand first line on and keep second line.
• One site, one shift and a stable mix. That points toward in-house. A first move is to write the handover anyway, for the days a technician is away.

These rows are examples of reading, not findings, and the owner decides the first move.

Hours and Sites in the Managed Service Desk vs In-House Choice

Hours come first. A firm whose employees work outside the office day has the same need for an answer then. For example, a night shift at a warehouse meets the same locked account as the day shift. The IT head asks a plain question: who would answer at that hour? Under the in-house option, the answer is a rostered technician or a later reply. Under the managed option, the provider’s staff answer to the handover.

Sites come next. More sites mean more visits to rooms and hardware. An outside team can answer a call from anywhere, but someone has to be its hands at each site. That person, named in writing, plugs in a cable or restarts a device while a technician talks them through it.

In the managed service desk vs in-house choice, a firm with several locations gives hours and sites the same weight as the ticket mix. A firm with one site and office hours has less to weigh here.

A Hybrid Keeps Some Work on Each Side

A hybrid can split the work in two ways. The first is by kind of ticket. Here, the IT head writes down which kinds go to whom and keeps that list. For example, account requests may go to the provider’s staff, while visits to rooms stay with the firm’s technician.

The second split is by hour. The firm’s team answers in office hours, and the provider’s staff answer outside them. An employee who raises a ticket at night reaches outside staff, and the firm’s team picks up anything left in the morning.

Both splits carry one risk: a ticket handed across without an owner. To close that gap, the IT head writes one contact on each side into the handover. When a ticket crosses, each contact knows whom to ask.

A firm can also take some requests out of both sides’ hands. Signisys covers writing routine requests as rules in a separate use case, and that work can shrink what either side answers.

The Owner’s Part Under Any Option

Under any option, the owner keeps three things. One is the decision itself. Another is the list of who may ask for what, such as who may approve a new account. The third is the record of how each kind of ticket gets answered. A provider’s staff follow all three, but they do not set them.

Central government departments in the UK work from the UK government’s sourcing guidance, known as the Sourcing Playbook. It asks departments to run a delivery model assessment before they choose between doing a service in-house, buying it in or mixing the two. Among the points to weigh are skills and capacity, the assets involved, and the risks, and which side can best manage them. Departments also weigh how they will manage service levels. In addition, the guidance advises planning early for the end of an arrangement.

The UK government wrote the Playbook for its central departments, so we use it here only as a plain list of what to weigh, not as an instruction to the reader.

With the record of answers, the owner can also see how the desk performs. That work, reading what the desk records, sits in a separate Signisys use case.

Before Lessons and After Hours at Three Schools

These three private schools in the GCC exist only on this page and stand for no real school. They share one small IT team that answers staff and teacher requests, and no name or city is given for them.

The IT head sorts last quarter’s tickets and sees two clusters. Requests gather before the school day starts and during lessons, when a projector or a class login fails. The evening and weekend requests come from staff preparing for events, such as a parents’ evening or a sports day.

From that reading, the group keeps first and second line with its own team during school hours. Then the IT head writes a list of the kinds that go to a provider’s staff outside those hours, such as sound checks for events and locked accounts. The IT head also names one contact on each side in the handover.

Finally, the IT head sets a date to look at the split again, after the first term under it. Fixing such a date before any change starts is one of the steps in a one-page plan that begins with a month of tickets.

The IT head now has the list of who answers which kind of ticket, and a date to review it.

Four Things to Write Before Asking Anyone

Before an owner asks a provider, or the firm’s own team, for an answer, four notes come first. To begin, the IT head sorts last quarter’s tickets into kinds. Next comes the hour each one arrived, and then which ones needed someone on site. Last, the IT head writes which kinds each side would answer.

How a desk performs once chosen falls outside this comparison. One way to look at a desk later, using ten tickets it has closed, is given in a desk count and an employee count for each of four stages.

The list is also what the owner sends with a request for a Signisys desk review.

A word on interest: the IT consulting and managed cloud services plus the IT service management and operations automation solution are Signisys offerings. Signisys has a commercial interest in how a firm makes this choice.

Managed Service Desk vs In-House FAQ: Questions From Owners