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Saturday, March 8, 2014

How To Make Good Use Of Your IT Support Team In Your Business

By Gloria Munger


In the early years of people using computers in the business environment the IT support was very limited. It usually comprised of a technician whose main task was to make sure that system backups were made. They would be located in a small room surrounded by broken computers and spare parts.

It was quite common for users to attempt to fix any problems themselves, rather than calling a member of the support team for help. As the technology got more complicated this habit stopped. It is accepted that specialists are required to deal with problems on network servers and associated software.

The complexity of these systems meant that the size of the team supporting them had to increase. As companies grew and the software systems they started to use needed to serve more functions, people with a variety of skills were required. However, as well as maintaining the new equipment, the legacy software still needed looking after.

The way that an IT support team operates has had to change to cope with the growth of multinational companies, all working in different time zones. The departments are normally open 24 hours a day throughout the week, especially if there is just one support team for the whole global network. This means that if a user wants to report a fault, it is typically done by raising a support ticket on the company intranet.

Raising a ticket, or a request for help, may seem a bit extreme to a user who is just having problems with an e-mail account. However, this information can then be targeted at an engineer who is experienced in such problems, and therefore, be able to rectify the situation quickly. They might also find an underlying fault in the system due to this single report.

On a few occasions, what seems like a basic e-mail failure report might be an early symptom of a much bigger problem. It could be that similar faults have been reported by people in different locations throughout the world, and this would only be noticed if there was somebody to collate all the tickets. With this knowledge, problems can be escalated, and more members of the team allocated to solve them.

Due to the complexity of the information technology systems that need supporting these days, a lot of companies choose to outsource the task to external consultancies. These companies call on specialists to work on particular problems on a freelance basis. There are benefits to working this way; however, the ability to make use of services like these depend on the size of the company and the budget available.

Over the years IT support has changed quite dramatically. Companies have come to realize that without these engineers, business can collapse very quickly. The manpower used in these departments have to be highly skilled and understand, and keep themselves updated, in many different technologies.




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