Blade Watch

I got this email yesterday from a colleague working for a medium sized company in the city, it is an illustration which wonderfully shows that we really do need to change from the box selling/cost center management way of doing business and support, moving towards a service delivery model.

At the same time not only does IT as a business unit need to adopt this stance, so does the end user community – the concept I have been talking about is “running IT as a business”

I got emailed the emails/conversations between the user and helpdesk, I have annoted parts to explain things that might not be clear, and removed the email headers/anything that might identify people.

“Good morning, our printer is broken and needs to be fixed urgently, it’s printer accounts_7 on server9, it’s a laser printer. Can someone come and fix it.”

Desktop support engineer is sent and looks at the printer. The cartridge/toner is ok, as is the drum, there are no jams. The printer is power cycled, the queues cleared and the print jobs resubmitted. Printing fails to work, the paper wont load and there are no paper jams. Desktop engineer escalates to their manager, noting the serial number and model of printer. The printer is for this department specifically, the users are told they can still print to the generic shared printers throughout the office, but that would mean manually loading headed note paper when they wanted to print official letters which they are reluctant to do.

The helpdesk manager:

“Good morning, call 7128290 relating to your laser printer accounts_7.

We have had a look at it, unfortunately there appears to be a hardware fault with the printer which we are unable to fix, we have no spare parts for the printer and would therefore have to call out an engineer to investigate. 

An engineer is £350, plus parts and an hourly fee, alternatively, we can supply a printer for £700 and I can have Mike (who looked at your printer) set it all up for you, please advise how you would like to proceed.

I would like to avoid calling an engineer if possible due to the age of the printer, it would be better replaced in the long run.

Regards, Janice”.

“Please call an engineer today to have the printer fixed, we are not buying a new printer, the printer is only four years old, it cannot have that much wrong with it.”

An engineer is called with the emergency call out fee to have the guy visit that day and inspects the printer. 

Printer fix it guy:

 ”Your printer is shafted mate.”

“I will replace the main logic board and then we may need to replace one of the feeders.”

Three hours later, with a new board and a few other parts fitted, the printer is ready for use. Jobs are submitted, but the alignment is wrong, the engineer looks and says he will need to call for more parts, but that will be additional cost, does the end user wish to pay?  Yes they reply, so additional time is allocated to have more parts fitted, this is done, and again printing is tested, the user is not happy with the results, it does not look right, the engineer agrees, he will need to investigate further and possibly call for more parts.

After a few further hours the CIO walking the halls notices the engineer wonders whats going on, finds out and takes over the situation.

“Send the guy home, this is nuts, I am not paying hundreds of pounds to fix a printer that should have been recycled years ago. I will deal with this.”, the CIO emails the users department manager copying in the helpdesk manager.

“Mike,

Your printer is broken and it is ancient, I’m having one of the guys bring a new one up, it really isn’t worth the money or the hassle trying to fix your old one.

If you don’t want to have your own departmental printer, let me or Janice know and I will have the team reconfigure the desktops to print to our new shared ones.

Regards

Bill”

We need to change two things, thinking of IT as a cost and thinking about departmental costs against the indirect costs and those economic “marginal costs”. By that I mean, looking at the lowest cost of deliverying services both in terms of finance and convenience. Had we replaced the printer in the first place, Janice could have allocated her desktop engineer to do other calls, be more productive rather than sit watching a guy replace printer parts, so let us look at the billable costs involved:

Printer fix it guy costs: £350 call out, plus £45 emergency fee, and £297.42 in parts, plus £45 per hour for four hours

Desktop support guy: 1 hour to look at the printer £20 (internal billable value), plus a further four hours watching printer guy.

Replacement printer: £700

CIO time / helpdesk manager/helpdesk to take the call : internal billable cost £375 for emaling and escalation

Total company cost: £2167.42 for a £700 printer issue.

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4. Educating the next generation for running IT as a business http://www.bladewatch.com/2009/09/04/the-need-to-launch-it-training-university-v2-0/ and http://www.bladewatch.com/2009/12/15/short-essay-on-training-the-next-generation/ I have written a few posts about...
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