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How a Midsize Firm Outsources Its Help Desk
Times are tough for industries across the spectrum of business. Large or small, emerging or established businesses are working overtime to find ways to trim the fat, increase productivity and make current processes more streamlined, effective and cost-efficient.
As the Chief Operating Officer of Kaplin Stewart Meloff Reiter & Stein, a PA-based business law firm, one of my core responsibilities is to ensure that the processes in place are working in favor of the firm's bottom line. When I joined Kaplin Stewart in 2002, one of the first places I looked to ensure value was the firm's outsourced services.
Nowhere should the “outsourcing equals savings” mantra ring more true than in the IT realm. The information technology umbrella is vast and firms often find it difficult to staff an entire IT department with talent possessing the myriad required skill sets.
Technology Should Equal Value
After evaluating Kaplin Stewart's IT infrastructure, we decided to undertake a complete technology overhaul to replace our outdated infrastructure, including servers, PCs and data backup systems.
One caveat of the technology overhaul was that the firm wanted to do more than simply update technology. Rather, it wanted the upgrade to accomplish three things: increase the firm's productivity and avoid stoppage of work due to a steep learning curve; increase the security and accessibility of the firm's documents and intellectual capital; and allow the firm to be even more client-centric with technology that kept pace and was compatible with its client base.
With the help of Adaptive Solutions Inc. (ASI), we achieved the goals and the resulting benefits supported the outsourcing value objective and the firm's commitment to quality outsourcing to save money.
Next Up: The Help Desk
With the successful upgrade, the firm's 75 users took to the new technology environment easily. One area in which the firm was still lacking, however, was tech support. Kaplin Stewart had no internal help desk; rather, the firm's administrator and tech-savvy billing manager troubleshot user issues in between biweekly visits from a contracted network engineer. As this process was proving to be both expensive and inefficient, we decided to abandon the current model and evaluate two support options: hiring an in-house IT specialist or outsourcing the majority of IT support to a reputable technology firm.
In order to evaluate the outsourcing option, we turned once again to ASI to help us pull the help desk picture into focus. ASI offered a remote help desk service called xTend I.T., a legal-specific help desk that offered, among other things, remote control of client desktops, a feature that we knew was critically important for our firm given the fact that we had no IT staff in-house and needed technical issues to be resolved quickly to avoid interference of workflow. Additionally, the xTend I.T. staff was familiar with the firm's legal applications suite, from document-management software to practice applications.
Ongoing Cost Savings Is Critical
ASI put an affordable support program in place. With encouragement from my team, our staff and attorneys began using the remote help desk right away. The cost to our firm was less than half the estimated per-year cost of hiring a full-time IT professional, yet the coverage was constant and the help desk team was responsive. In our firm's case, outsourcing the help desk has saved us on average $50,000 per year when compared with hiring a single in-house specialist with supplementary outsourced support.
In today's bootstrapping economic climate, firms can no longer afford to outsource services that do not bring the same quality, offer the same benefits or produce the same results as an in-house team. Although a lesser-quality vendor may initially cost a firm less in out-of-pocket expenses, a subpar service or deliverable can cost far more to a firm in the long run.
Adelaine F. Williams is the Chief Operating Officer at Kaplin Stewart Meloff Reiter & Stein. She is responsible for the direction and management of all administrative areas of the firm.
Times are tough for industries across the spectrum of business. Large or small, emerging or established businesses are working overtime to find ways to trim the fat, increase productivity and make current processes more streamlined, effective and cost-efficient.
As the Chief Operating Officer of
Nowhere should the “outsourcing equals savings” mantra ring more true than in the IT realm. The information technology umbrella is vast and firms often find it difficult to staff an entire IT department with talent possessing the myriad required skill sets.
Technology Should Equal Value
After evaluating
One caveat of the technology overhaul was that the firm wanted to do more than simply update technology. Rather, it wanted the upgrade to accomplish three things: increase the firm's productivity and avoid stoppage of work due to a steep learning curve; increase the security and accessibility of the firm's documents and intellectual capital; and allow the firm to be even more client-centric with technology that kept pace and was compatible with its client base.
With the help of Adaptive Solutions Inc. (ASI), we achieved the goals and the resulting benefits supported the outsourcing value objective and the firm's commitment to quality outsourcing to save money.
Next Up: The Help Desk
With the successful upgrade, the firm's 75 users took to the new technology environment easily. One area in which the firm was still lacking, however, was tech support.
In order to evaluate the outsourcing option, we turned once again to ASI to help us pull the help desk picture into focus. ASI offered a remote help desk service called xTend I.T., a legal-specific help desk that offered, among other things, remote control of client desktops, a feature that we knew was critically important for our firm given the fact that we had no IT staff in-house and needed technical issues to be resolved quickly to avoid interference of workflow. Additionally, the xTend I.T. staff was familiar with the firm's legal applications suite, from document-management software to practice applications.
Ongoing Cost Savings Is Critical
ASI put an affordable support program in place. With encouragement from my team, our staff and attorneys began using the remote help desk right away. The cost to our firm was less than half the estimated per-year cost of hiring a full-time IT professional, yet the coverage was constant and the help desk team was responsive. In our firm's case, outsourcing the help desk has saved us on average $50,000 per year when compared with hiring a single in-house specialist with supplementary outsourced support.
In today's bootstrapping economic climate, firms can no longer afford to outsource services that do not bring the same quality, offer the same benefits or produce the same results as an in-house team. Although a lesser-quality vendor may initially cost a firm less in out-of-pocket expenses, a subpar service or deliverable can cost far more to a firm in the long run.
Adelaine F. Williams is the Chief Operating Officer at
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