Analyzing the impact of IT helpdesks on the factors affecting labor productivity of diversified holdings in Sril Lanka

Abstract

Importance of adopting Information Technology into the business processes is a strategic decision taken by most of the modern day organizations. But there are many evidence that even though organizations spend a lot in IT, the expectations are not delivered. Mismanagement is identified as a main reason for this gap between the expectation and the reality. To minimize this gap, many organizations follow best practices such as IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). Within ITIL, IT helpdesk is considered as a key element which combines the rest of the processes defined under ITIL. Keeping the role of IT helpdesks in IT service management, this research attempts to understand the impact of helpdesks on the factors affecting productivity. More precisely the research scope was defined to focus the diversified holdings in Sri Lanka. Diversified holdings, by nature operate in multiple business verticals. This makes them to use various information systems to support the business functions adding complexity to the IT environment. This is the main reason of focusing diversified holdings during this research. This research managed to identify the current methods used by the IT end users and IT support teams in a case where support is needed. It has also identified several limitations of these traditional methods used. Going forward this research has identified the positive impact made by the features & processes available with IT helpdesk towards improving the productivity. Towards the latter part of this research, several guidelines are suggested, which can be used during a successful deployment of IT helpdesk. This section also includes the feature expectations of both IT end users and IT support teams. In summary, this research has identified the limitations of the existing methods of requesting IT support and the features available with the IT helpdesk to eliminate these limitations. It also has identified the positive impact of the IT helpdesk on the labor productivity. With the intension of deploying better IT helpdesks, several practical guidelines also were proposed based on the analysis done using collected data.