Question: number of users to support staff ratio ?

iMax

The place where I work has me as the IT Manager & that's it. There's currently 80 staff here & I'm kept "fairly" busy. However in three weeks we're getting an extra 15. That meant there's going to be me & 95 staff to support.

Just wondering what the ratio really should be In my last place there was three of us for 60 staff.

Eoin

Howyeh,

There are a lot of factors that have to be taken into account, such as: the number of Operating Systems etc, but if you have to support nearly 100 users, there should really be 1 server support person, and at least one desktop support person.

I worked in a company of 130 people as desktop support, and we had a support group of 4 people, not including the manager. The desktops and servers were all Win NT, however we ran a lot of UNIX servers as well.

The breakdown was
1 NT Server support person
2 Desktop Support people
1 UNIX & COMMS person.

We were all kept busy the whole time, so it didn't seem like we had too many people.

EDIT: Just re-read your post - 3 people for 60 staff in your last place seems OTT, but it all depends on the systems you have running.

One thing that can greatly help is a decent Help Desk application that the users can use to log tickets and these can be prioritised and assigned to the people in the support group. This makes it an awful lot easier on everyone (I actually wrote a web based one for the company in question, and it was found to be very useful).

HTH

Eoin

iMax

Thanks for the info Eoin. It could just be that I'm a little overwhelmed.

We're running a mixture of XP/2k & OSX

The last place had a number of different os & languages, hense the need for more staff.

Eoin

Excuse my ignorance - is OS X the Mac OS?

Well, 1 person for nearly 100 people is not enough - you maybe able to "firefight", but you will have no time for any project type stuff (server upgrades and what have you).

Another thing to do is try and get everyone on the same Win OS as possible - it's easier to just support one flavour of Windows. Standardising the end user platform as much as possible is helpful for trouble shooting.

Like I said, if you don't have a decent method of logging and tracking help desk tickets, look into this ASAP - once you get the users into the habit of logging tickets properly it will make life easier for everyone. Let me know if you want more details on this, as I said in my first post, I have both used (from a tech support point of view) and written systems like this, so maybe able to give you some pointers.

If you get a chance, also look into the itSMF (IT Service Management Forum) - it is a framework for running an IT help desk. Don't have a site for it off the top of my head, but google will do the trick.

Like I said, if you need more details reply on this thread, or PM me.

Eoin

iMax

Any details at all would be good thanks eoin.

snappieT

Touchpaper Helpdesk (http://www.touchpaper.com/main.cfm?Type=HD&MenuId=21) is ideal for logging support tickets, and they have an office in Baggot Street if things go pear-shaped

WhiteWashMan

i would have said that 1 desktop support person to 100 users sounds about right, but that is if you have a whole support team going, and you are in a large organisation.

if you just have a 100 users, then it really depends on what they are doing, what apps, how the apps are served, what the infrastructre is like, quality of kit, etc, etc, etc.

as someone said, you could easily do 100 to 1 if you like firefighting the whole time, but it means you would have little time for anything else. in your situation, i would have thought 3 people would be sufficient, as long as you have all the major bases covered.

Eoin

WhiteWashMan wrote:

i would have said that 1 desktop support person to 100 users sounds about right, but that is if you have a whole support team going, and you are in a large organisation.

Sounds like the OP IS the support team - not just the end user support person.

iMax,

I don't know any off the shelf help desk applications off the top of my head ( I am sure people will be able to recommend some here), as we tend to do these things ourselves in house, but a simple implementation maybe something like the following:

1) a screen for the users to log a ticket, providing the problem type, details, contact details etc. The status of the ticket is now "new"

2) a screen for the users to see their currently logged tickets.

3) a screen for the support group to view the new tickets, prioritise and assign to the appropriate person. The status is "assigned"

4) a screen for the support engineer to view their list of tickets, and drill down into the details for each one. When they do this, they may be able to resolve the ticket on the spot, or may want the user to provide more details. If they need more details, the ticket will be bounced back to the user requesting more info.

5) once the support person resolves a ticket, it is up to the user to confirm this is the case. Once they do, the ticket is closed

At each stage, an email can be sent to the user to let them know of any status updates etc, and whether they are required to provide more details in order to help the engineer resolve the problem.


The advantages of a system like this are:

Standardised method of logging tickets, that helps to identify up front what the problem is.

Each ticket has a life cycle, and the status of each ticket is visible to the user - I have found that once a user knows that you are dealing with a problem, they are happy enough to leave it with you.

Provides a knowledge base of solutions to problems (as the system should provide the functionality to let the support engineer enter the resolution to the problem)

Reporting can be carried out on things like amount of tickets logged, time to completion etc.

Hope this helps,

Eoin

Trojan

My number from the air is 1 per 40.

Eoin

Trojan wrote:

My number from the air is 1 per 40.

That's a pretty good guideline number (usual caveat about the number of systems etc etc).