ABS Associates White Paper Sample

According to a recent survey by the Help Desk Institute, cost is the top reason companies do not outsource any or all components of their help desk function. Often, organizations looking to compare the costs of an internal solution with those of an outsourced help desk fail to include the “hidden costs” of support. For instance, expenses related to recruiting, hiring, training, retention, and productivity are seldom incorporated into the estimated outlay for in-house support solutions.

Additionally, the investment capital and amortized expenses of supporting technologies and infrastructure are typically unaccounted for in an internal ROI model. Before deciding one solution is more or less expensive than another, it is important to understand all of the costs associated with support, especially the investments in the development of people, processes and technology. Outsourced solutions usually provide all the help desk hardware and software; hosting and redundancy; data analysis and reporting; and systems maintenance, upgrading, and enhancing. While an outsourcer’s fees reflect all of these factors, the provider can achieve economies of scale by amortizing the cost across multiple clients whereas an insourcer cannot.