At a more granular level, Web ASPs (application service providers) provide services through Web browsers where users can access off-the-shelf, shrinkwrapped software support through a knowledge base, e-mail, chat and user forums. Some Web ASPs even include a toll-free telephone number to provide a helping hand. Web ASPs aim to reduce the load on the helpdesk, focusing on Tier 1 and 2 support (see "ASPs: Help From Afar"). These tools are important but do not verge on ownership in outsourcing.
We sent out RFIs (requests for information) to potential service providers to test the viability of outsourcing a helpdesk. The RFI describes the helpdesk services of Metropolitan Care (Metro), a fictitious medical center providing children's health care.
Metro seeks to become a premier provider of children's health care. Now servicing 40 percent of the metropolitan area's pediatric market, Metro aims to capture 60 percent of the market and provide health-care information to the community through knowledge bases and state-of-the-art delivery mechanisms. Because of a shortage of IT workers in the area, Metro needs to focus its scarce resources on business initiatives rather than on computer maintenance and support. Metro aims to reduce its total costs in supporting operating system and application software and hopes to partner with a service provider that can grow with the business.
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The Metro Help Desk (MHD) supports the 250-bed Health Center, a suburban community hospital, and three downtown health clinics. MHD has 15 full-time employees to support 7,500 Metro employees. It provides traditional tiered support, as follows:
- Tier 1: Initial call/problem identification and troubleshooting; incident creation and tracking; triage of incidents to network engineers or service contractors.
- Tier 2: Telephone or e-mail support.
- Tier 3: Hands-on support from Tier 2, Metro engineers, or third-party maintenance and support.
The helpdesk also installs, configures and maintains operating systems and application software. MHD uses Remedy Corp. software and its Web-based interface for call tracking and incident reporting. It compiles asset inventories of hardware and software and leverages an internal Web site to publish self-help documentation and FAQs in Adobe Acrobat.
MHD is on-site 24x7 in the Health Center, and 10 hours a day, five days a week in the hospital. The clinics have no on-site support. Users can report incidents to MHD via phone and e-mail. In 1999, MHD answered all calls within two minutes, voicemail within four hours and e-mail within 2 hours. It boasted a 95 percent success rate in resolving problems at Tiers 2 and 3.
Metro's hardware inventory includes 2,700 PCs (Hewlett-Packard Co. Vectra), 860 Apple Computer Macintoshes (PowerMac G3/G4) and 150 laptops (IBM ThinkPad) with standard configurations. Metro plans to install 3,000 new PCs, 50 printers and 10 laptops. Metro has no plans to install new Macintosh computers, though support for the platform continues. MHD supports a range of software that includes Microsoft Windows 98/NT operating systems and Office applications, Netscape Messenger, Palm Desktop Software, and offerings from PeopleSoft. Metro also has clinical, diagnostic and patient data warehoused in Oracle databases.
Oracle user identifications and passwords are handled separately from Metro's NT domain database and are reserved for the medical staff. Metro network engineers maintain clustered NT domain servers in a switched gigabit environment in the basement of the Health Center. Leased lines are used to serve the community hospital and clinics.
In 1999, MHD resolved 24,127 incidents (21,944 at Tier 2 and 2,183 at Tier 3). The total cost of running MHD was $1.19 million, which included salaries and benefits for 10 FTEs (full-time employees) at Tiers 1 and 2 ($437,500) and for five FTEs at Tier 3 ($701,663), and training ($50,000). Without considering the infrastructure cost, Metro's cost per incident ranged from $21.44 to $49.29.
Also in 1999, Metro paid outside contractors $540,000 for PC, Macintosh and printer support (about $100 per CPU and $75 per printer per year). Metro negotiates hardware maintenance contracts annually.
RFI Deliverables
We sent the above scenario to 18 service providers; eight responded. EDS, Fused Solutions, InTek Solutions Corp., Mission Critical Technical Services Corp., MultiSoft and Seneca Corp. are full-service providers that are capable of "owning" MHD. EDS, however, is the only provider that could support Metro's future business needs. MultiSoft did not provide enough information for a comparative analysis.
Three providers are Web ASPs that fall short of owning MHD, because they lack the resources for the long haul. Web ASPs like SafeHarbor Technology Corp. and 911Helpline.com satisfy Metro's immediate goal to reduce costs for operating system and application software; however, they could not meet all Metro's needs. Web ASPs use the phone, chat and e-mail, and provide users with self-help support with knowledge bases, forums and chat rooms (see "ASPs: Help From Afar").
Looking beyond business models, we also required respondents to detail their experience, major customers, application support coverage and service delivery mechanisms. The RFI included an SLA (service-level agreement) with terms and conditions to satisfy and reporting requirements for systematic quality assurance. It also looked for the scope of integration with custom applications and probed for details of implementation. Last, we required each respondent to estimate the cost of supplying helpdesk services per user, per computer or per incident along with an annual quote.
Our RFI detailed the terms and agreements for an SLA that Metro applies to its own helpdesk service. Those terms include the following:
- Answer calls in two minutes.
- Respond to all voicemail messages within four hours and e-mail messages within two hours.
- Schedule on-site visits for supported software within five days.
- Triage high-priority calls to Metro engineers or hardware maintenance contractors within 10 minutes (normal priority calls within 30 minutes).
- Track all triaged calls.
The SLA also provides for systematic quality assurance in reporting total calls or incidents, response times, call durations with open-call and hold-queue status reports, and average mean time to resolution for all incidents.
EDS gets our Editor's Choice award and provides the best value. EDS supports all Metro's software applications, exceeds service-level requirements and provides for a 30 percent to 50 percent cost saving per incident vis-à-vis MHD's cost. EDS' Managed WorkSpace Services also scales to provide on-site technicians, asset management services and integration with custom applications in the near term. In the long term, EDS can consult on strategic direction and add valuable services to enable and support Metro as a premier provider of children's health care.
Other respondents' solutions for MHD have merit. Contracting for services is heavily dependent upon specific facts and details in an RFI. For example, Metro's facts do not fit squarely into our respondents' pricing models, as Metro's costs are estimated on tiered layers of support and not easily separated. All our respondents might weigh in differently in another time and place.
In addition, you should contact some providers notably absent. For example, IBM Global Services balked at providing pricing information and declined to participate. Compaq Computer Corp. Global Services and Hewlett-Packard Co. Outsourcing Services had ownership problems with the RFI and did not complete it on deadline, despite numerous and generous extensions.
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