Who Says You Can't Go Home?

Abstract

When is it time to bring an outsourced service back in house? The field of information technology is ever changing. Outsourcing may be good today, but what about tomorrow? Nearly ten years ago, outsourcing our helpline was the perfect solution. We were dealing with an IT personnel shortage and as a result, we were unable to meet the needs of our faculty and staff. As we grew during those ten years, it became very clear that there was a huge disconnect between the outsourced level 1 helpline and our level 2 and level 3 support. Statistics showed that call volume per day was low and that there were several hours each day that we were paying to have 2 full time employees but couldn't utilize their time for anything other than level 1 phone support. Logistics were also our enemy. Having the outsourced technicians off-site also meant they couldn't go to offices and perform level 1 tasks. We desperately needed to centralize into a fully functional service desk model. During this session we will share how our IT department evolved and why it was the right time to insource. It took time and hard work to gather the necessary information to even consider making this change. You will see how we convinced our upper administration why this would be a good move, how we handled push back from the campus community, and how we successfully brought our helpline back home.